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NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



NEW ENGLAND 

IN 

LETTERS 

By 
RUFUS ROCKWELL WILSON 

Author of " Rambles in Colonial Byways " 



-^^ 




J13eto gotb 

A. Wessels Company 
1904 






Copyrighted, 1904, hy 
A. Wessels Company, New York 



Printed April, 1904 



iuBRARY n' CONGRESS 
I Two Cooles Hereived 

1 JUN 18 '904 

Cooyrlifht F.n'r> 

CUAsI '^ XXc. No. 

COPY B 



PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 

BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 

BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



FOREWORD 



THE present volume records a series of pilgrim- 
ages to the New England scenes and places 
associated with the men and women who have 
helped to make our literature, though brief its chronicle, 
one of our most preious heritages. The story of each 
author's life and work is told as far as possible in con- 
nection with its environment, and it is hoped that in 
this way the reader will be brought to a closer and 
more intimate knowledge of those who though dead 
yet live in the messages they have left for their fellows. 
The preparation of these pages has been for the author 
a source of delight : if they give pleasure to those into 
whose hands they fall he will feel that his labor has 
abundant reward. 

R. R. W. 



To 

WHO IN 

HALE AND HONORED AGE BINDS A FRUITFUL PRESENT 

TO A HEROIC PAST 



CONTENTS 

I Through Longfellow's Country 

II Wanderings in Whittier Land 

III The Salem of Hawthorne . 

IV Emerson and Others in Concord 

V Cambridge and its Worthies . 

VI A Day of Literary Beginnings 

VII The Autocrat and His Comrades 

VIII The Boston of a Later Time . 

IX The Land of the Pilgrims . . 

X A Winding Bay State Journey 

XI The Berkshires and Beyond 

XII Connecticut Wits and Worthies 

ix 



. 1 

. 29 
. 59 

. 85 
. 113 
. 140 
. 173 

. 207 
. 244 
. 277 
. 312 
. 344 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Elmwood. The Home of James Russell Lowell, 

Cambridge Frontispiece 

Birthplace of John Greenleaf Whittier, East 

Haverhill 41 

The Old Manse, Concord 87 

Birthplace of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Cambridge 120 

The " Old Oaken Bucket " Homestead, Scituate 254 

Edgewood. The Home of Donald G. Mitchell 376 



XI 



Chapter I 
Through Longfellow's Country 

WHEN it was ended there was reason to re- 
joice that the pilgrimage here recorded 
had its beginning in Portland, for Long- 
fellow, best beloved of our poets, was born in the 
beautiful old town by the sea, cherished it beyond any 
place on earth and sang its charms in some of his sweet- 
est verse. Here, as a youth, amid scenes upon which 
the eye never tires of feasting, he drank in the undying 
beauty of nature, and with it the lessons of love, pa- 
tience and resignation which were the master influences 
in his literary career. One has but to read "My Lost 
Youth," "The Sea Diver," "The Skeleton in Armor," 
"The Lighthouse," and his other poems of the sea to 
know how abiding recollection of his boyhood home 
helped to shape the cliildren of his fancy. 

Portland honors Longfellow's memory in more than 
one graceful and appreciative way. There is a statue 
of the poet in the western end of the city, and the house 
at the corner of Hancock and Fore Streets where, in 

1 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

1807, he was born is visited every year by a throng of 
pilgrims. It is still in a fair state of preservation, but 
the neighborhood has deteriorated since Longfellow's 
father lived in it, and it now wears an unkempt and 
slovenly air. Longfellow passed his youth in the house 
on Congress Street known as the Longfellow mansion 
and often mistaken for his birthplace. This house 
was bequeathed by his sister in 1901 to the Maine His- 
torical Society upon condition that it should be kept in 
its present form, as a memorial to Longfellow and his 
family. Built in 1785 by General Peleg Wadsworth, 
grandfather of the poet, it was originally two stories 
high, a third being added in 1826; but it has under- 
gone no alteration since the latter date, though it stands 
now in the heart of the business quarter of the town. 

Portland Avas also the birthplace of Nathaniel Parker 
and Sara Payson Willis — " Fanny Fern " — and for the 
latter its beauty and charm were precious memories 
until her death. She tells us in her touching "Story 
About Myself" that while writing the book in widowed 
poverty her thoughts went back to her childhood home. 
She had often, in the olden time, wandered in the woods 
about Portland w ith her mother, who " always used to 
pluck a leaf of the fern to place in her bosom for its 

2 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

sweet odor." Living over again the vanished days, 
she said to herself: "My name shall be 'Fanny Fern,* 
little dreaming that anybody would ever know or care 
anything about it." "Many long days after this," she 
writes in another place, " I visited my birthplace, Port- 
land. I wandered up and down the streets of that 
lovely, leafy city and tried to find the church where 
good Dr. Payson used to preach. Then, too, I wanted 
to see the house where I was bom, the house where he 
laid hands of blessing on my baby forehead when it was 
purple with what they thought was the 'death agony.' 
But where it was that the little flickering life began I 
could not find out." 

Others have since discovered what she tried in vain 
to learn. On the site of a neat cottage at 72 Franklin 
Street once stood the house in which Nathaniel and 
Sara Willis were born. Their pious yet militant father 
was the founder of the Portland "Argus," and under- 
went imprisonment for his too caustic comments on 
the doings of his neighbors. James and Erastus Brooks 
were also Portland editors in their youth; and so was 
Seba Smith, one of the drollest of our early humorists, 
while there James G. Blaine tried his 'prentice hand at 
journalism. Another Portland editor of the old days, 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

and one native to the soil, was John Neal, a prolific 
and gifted maker of books, who needed only the power 
of concentration to have left an enduring mark upon 
the literature of his time. 

Portland also claims as her own Nathaniel Deering 
and Isaac McLellan, "poet of the rod and gun"; Ann 
S. Stephens and Elizabeth Payson Prentiss, whose once 
popular novels still find readers, and Elizabeth Akers 
Allen, whose "Rock me to Sleep, Mother," won for its 
author sure if slender fame; while Eliza Oakes, though 
born in another part of Maine, lived for a number of 
years in Portland, and there became the wife of Seba 
Smith. This gifted and beautiful woman was the first 
of her sex in this country to appear as a public lecturer, 
and among the first to speak from a pulpit. Sixty 
years ago her popularity was at its flood, and her writ- 
ings in prose and verse carried her name to other lands. 
Men pass away, however, and their idols with them, and 
long before old age she had disappeared from public 
view. Her death in 1892 was notable chiefly because 
it reminded a busy and careless world that such a 
woman as Eliza Oakes Smith had ever lived. 

While Longfellow was still a boy in Portland, Na- 
thaniel Hawthorne came to dwell in another part <rf 

4 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

the same county. The latter was fourteen years old 
when, early in 1818, he was taken by his widowed 
mother to live in a house built for her by her brother in 
the town of Raymond, now as then a secluded, forest- 
girt hamlet, reached by a twenty -mile drive from Port- 
land through the lovely valley of the Presumscott, or by 
an equal journey from the railway station at the 
southern end of Lake Sebago. The house occupied 
by the Hawthornes, a large two-storied wooden struc- 
ture, was subsequently remodeled into a church. 
Though Mrs. Hawthorne and her daughters remained 
three or four years at Raymond, the son at the end of a 
twelvemonth was sent to school in Salem, and two 
years later he entered Bowdoin College. He returned, 
however, to spend his yearly vacations in the wilderness, 
and these visits compassed some of the most gratefully 
remembered experiences of his life. 

Hawthorne, at a later time, spoke of Raymond as 
the place where" I first got my cursed habit of solitude "; 
yet he always rehshed solitude, and, he declares in 
another place, " I hved in Maine hke a bird of the air, 
so perfect was the freedom I enjoyed." During the 
long days of summer he roamed, gun in hand, through 
the great woods; and during the moonlight nights of 

5 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

winter he would skate for hours all alone upon Lake 
Sebago, with the deep shadows of the snow-clad hills 
on either hand. Now and then, when he got too far 
away from home to return, he would seek shelter in 
some logger's cabin, and there pass the night, warmed 
by a roaring wood-fire, watching the silent stars. " I 
ran quite wild," he wrote in 1853, "and would, I think, 
have willingly run wild till tliis time, fishing all day 
long, or shooting with an old fowling-piece, but reading 
a good deal, too, on the rainy days, especially in Shake- 
speare and 'The Pilgrim's Progress' and any poetry or 
liffht books within reach." 

Though Bowdoin when Hawthorne entered it in 
1821 was a struggling institution of slender resources, 
it numbered poets and statesmen among its under- 
graduates, for his fellow-students included Longfellow 
and Franklin Pierce. Both of these men became his 
lifelong friends, but the one of his classmates who 
stood closest to him was Horatio Bridge, his chum 
and inseparable companion. Bridge, who afterwards 
served with distinction in the navy, seems earlier even 
than the embryo writer himself to have divined his true 
calling. "If anybody," Hawthorne wrote him in later 
years, " is responsible for my being an author, it is your- 

6 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

self. I know not whence your faith came; but while 
we were lads together at a country college, gathering 
blackberries in study hours under those tall academic 
pines ; or watching the great logs as they tumbled along 
the current of the Androscoggin; or shooting pigeons 
or gray squirrels in the woods; or bat-fowling in the 
summer twilight; or catching trout in that shadowy 
little stream which, I suppose, is still wandering river- 
ward through the forest — though you and I will never 
cast a line in it again — two idle lads, in short (as we 
need not fear to acknowledge now), doing a hundred 
things the faculty never heard of, or else it had 
been worse for us — still it was your prognostic of 
your friend's destiny that he was to be a writer of 
fiction." 

Hawthorne's college room was 17 Maine Hall, one 
of the three dormitories of brick and stone which flank 
Bowdoin's wide-spreading campus. There remains no 
other visible memorial of his residence at Brunswick, 
though the site of the inn he describes in "Fanshawe" 
is marked by an elm. The presence of Longfellow, on 
the other hand, is felt in more than one corner of the old 
college town. The poet's room when a student was 
27 Winthrop Hall; upon his return to Bowdoin in 18?9 

7 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



to become professor of modern languages he made his 
home in the house now occupied by General Joshua L. 
Chamberlain at the corner of Maine and Potter Streets; 
and at 23 Federal Street, an elm-shaded thorough- 
fare running from the Androscoggin to the college 
campus, one finds the house to which he brought 
his bride. 

Mary Potter had been a schoolmate of Longfellow 
in their native Portland, and tradition has it that on the 
young professor's returning to the town after three years' 
absence in Europe, whence he had gone to fit himself 
for his duties at Bowdoin, he saw her at church and was 
so struck with her beauty and grace as to follow her 
home without venturing to accost her. But on reach- 
ing his own house, one of his biographers tells us, " he 
begged his sister to call with him at once at the Potter 
residence, and all the rest followed as in a novel." The 
husband was twenty-four and the wife nineteen years 
of age when they began married life in the Federal 
Street house — a two-storied wooden structure of the 
type so often seen in New England, but still attractive 
under its goodly elms. The main portion of the house 
has a porch in front with the entrance hall behind it 
and a hall window above. Four windows on either 

8 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

side light corresponding rooms, and a large ell extends 
backward from the main house to the edge of a small 
bluff, marked by two old pine trees. 

Longfellow has left us a pleasant picture of his study 
on the ground floor of the main house. " I can almost 
fancy myself in Spain," he writes on a June day in 1831, 
" the morning is so soft and beautiful. The tessellated 
shadow of the honeysuckle lies motionless upon my 
study floor, as if it were a figure in the carpet; and 
through the open window comes the fragrance of the 
wild briar and the mock orange. The birds are carol- 
ling in the trees, and their shadows flit across the win- 
dow as they dart to and fro in the sunshine; while the 
murmur of the bee, the cooing of the doves from the 
eaves, and the whirring of a little humming-bird that 
has its nest in the honeysuckle, send up a sound of joy 
to meet the rising sun." Such was the nook in which 
Longfellow laid the corner-stone of his fame. Here he 
gave final form to his " Outre Mer" and his translation 
of the " Coplas of Jorge Manrique," and in a Brunswick 
shipyard found the material and impulse to write " The 
Building of the Ship." But his connection with Bow- 
doin came soon to an end. He left it in 1834, on the 
way to his long professorship at Harvard, and, save for 

9 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

an occasional visit in after years, the scene of his early 
labors knew him no more. 

Sixteen years after Longfellow's departure from 
Bowdoin Calvin E. Stowe joined its faculty as professor 
of divinity, and with his wife, Harriet Beecher, took up 
his residence in a house at 63 Federal Street, soon to 
become historic as the birthplace of "Uncle Tom's 
Cabin." Mrs. Stowe 's father was Lyman Beecher and 
Henry Ward Beecher was her brother. She had passed 
her early married life in southern Ohio, on the border 
line between the free and slave States, and her experi- 
ences had bred an interest in the anti-slavery agitation 
which was shared to the full by her husband. Thus, 
when they settled in Brunswick, both were distressed 
at the apathy with which their new neighbors regarded 
the abolition movement, and it was not long before the 
wife conceived the idea of writing some sketches that 
should give the world a picture of slavery as 
she had seen it. One day while looking over a 
bound volume of an anti-slavery magazine she read 
an account of the escape of a slave and her child from 
Kentucky over the ice of the Ohio River. This was 
the first incident of a story that swiftly assumed 
shape in her mind, and for the model of Uncle Tom 

10 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

she took the husband of a former slave employed in 
her own family. 

The scene of Uncle Tom's death, in which the pathos 
and dramatic force of the story reach a climax, was the 
first put on paper. This came to her mind while at- 
tending communion service in a Brunswick church. 
She went home and at once wrote out the chapter with 
such effective truth as to capture completely the sym- 
pathies of her children. After that the story took form 
rapidly, and, when the opening chapters were sub- 
mitted to the "National Era," an anti-slavery journal 
published in Washington, the editor at once accepted 
it for serial publication. It was enthusiastically re- 
ceived from the outset, and without delay John P. 
Jewett, a young Boston publisher, offered to issue the 
whole in book form. His offer was accepted, and in 
March, 1852, the first edition of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 
came from the press. 

Its success was immediate and without parallel in 
literary history. Ten thousand copies were sold in a 
fortnight; for months eight great presses were kept 
constantly at work; and in America alone 300,000 
copies were sold witliin a year. Nor was its popularity 
limited to the author's own country; still less was it the 

11 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

success of a day. The book had an enormous sale in 
Europe, and after half a century is still read in scores 
of different languages. Its moral and political effect 
in bringing home to the people of the North the true 
meaning of slavery is now a commonplace of history. 
Mrs. Stowe was always of the opinion that the story 
had been written through her quite as much as by 
her, and an incident related by her biographer shows 
that this belief became more unquestioning with the 
years. Wliile at Sag Harbor shortly before her death, 
an old sea-captain came up to shake hands with 
her, saying: 

"I am glad to meet the woman who wrote 'Uncle 
Tom's Cabin.'" 

"But I did not write it," answered the white-haired 
old lady as she shook the captain's hand. 

" You didn't ! " he ejaculated in amazement. " Why, 
who did then } " 

"God wrote it," was the reply. "I merely did his 
dictation." 

"Amen," said the captain reverently, as, hat in hand, 
he walked thoughtfully away. 

The birthplace of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is a house 
very like that to which Longfellow brought his bride, 

12 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

save that it lacks the porch mentioned in the case of the 
other. It was owned in earher days by John Titcomb, 
a professor of odd jobs, and a well known figure in the 
Brunswick of his time, to whom Mrs. Stowe makes 
frequent and humorous reference in her letters. Her 
occupancy of the Titcomb house ended in 1852, when 
her husband left Bowdoin to become professor of sacred 
literature at Andover Theological Seminary. Maine, 
however, gave being to one of her later stories, that 
charming idyl, "The Pearl of Orr's Island," which 
borrowed its setting from an island near Brunswick, 
where the author spent many summer months. 

It is a roundabout journey from New Brunswick to 
Waterford, but it leads through many a stretch of 
charming scenery, and it takes one to the birthplace 
and grave of Charles Farrar Browne, the droll and 
whimsical genius best known to folk of his own time as 
Artemus Ward. Waterford lies among the foot-hills 
of the ^Vhite Mountains, and under the very shadow 
of Mount Tir'm, so named, according to local tradition, 
from the Indians, who in climbing its steep sides were 
wont to say, "Tire um Injuns." Its site, a level plain 
known as Waterford Flat, affords room for only a small 
number of buildings, and in this hamlet of five score 

13 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



inhabitants, on an April day, in 1834, Charles Farrar 
Browne entered life. His birthplace was destroyed by 
fire many years ago, but the two-storied house, painted 
white with green window-blinds, in which he passed 
the greater part of his boyhood, still stands, under 
sheltering elms, on the north side of the village green. 
Browne's father died when he was only thirteen years 
old, and a little later the son left Waterford to make his 
own way in the world. He often returned, however, 
to this hamlet among the hills, and, as he grew in fame, 
his visits to Waterford became occasions of social in- 
terest in which all of the people of the place had part. 
Those who remember him will tell you that he extended 
his hand to every child and greeted all he met as neigh- 
bors and friends. Only one door was he known to 
pass. Some rich relatives of his mother who held aloof 
from him when he was a poor printer and most needed 
their friendship, were now fain to offer him the hospi- 
talities of their home, but he never called to accept 
them. Browne had a wanderer's love for his birthplace. 
When dying in England, at the early age of thirty-three, 
he made request that his body be brought to Waterford 
for burial, and it now lies beside those of his parents, 
brothers and sister in the little village cemetery. A 

14 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

granite monument at the left of the family plot bears 
simply the word "Browne," but on the plain white head- 
stone which marks the grave of the gentle humorist is 
inscribed the legend — " His memory will live as a 
sweet and unfading recollection." 

The burial garth in which Browne takes his rest bor- 
rows its name of Elm Vale from a farm christened and 
long owned by Robert Haskins, the uncle of Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, and there in the days of his youth the 
sage of Concord passed many happy hours. Robert 
Haskins, of Boston, bom in 1774, at the age of twenty- 
three took to wife Rebecca, daughter of the Reverend 
William Emerson, of Concord. The same year the 
town of Waterford hired the Reverend Lincoln Ripley 
to minister to the spiritual needs of its people. His 
brother was the second husband of Mrs. Haskins' 
mother, and it was his settlement in the community that 
in 1802 brought Robert Haskins to Waterford, where he 
established the first store in the town, becoming also a 
farmer and manufacturer. He settled first in a locality 
known as Plummer Hill, but later established the Elm 
Yale homestead which long stood just across the road 
from the cemetery of the same name. Shaded by 
mighty elms, the house erected by Haskins was built 

15 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



of pine from primeval trees, and when it was burned 
there disappeared a splendid example of the house- 
building of three generations ago. Here when a young 
man and even in his mature years Ralph Waldo Emer- 
son visited his aunts, Mrs. Haskins, and her maiden 
sister, Mary Moody Emerson. But he came to Elm 
Vale only once after it had passed into the hands of 
strangers, and then, its interior having been much 
changed, he would not enter the old house. He asked 
leave, instead, to visit the orchard, where he filled his 
pockets with apples, and then returned to his carriage. 
Elm Vale never saw him again. 

The morrow of his visit to Waterford found the writer 
among the New Hampshire hills at the birthplace of 
Daniel Webster. The records tell us that Webster's 
father, a Puritan of stern and sterling character, served 
under Wolfe in the French war, and later was a captain 
in the Revolutionary army. A few years before the 
War of Independence, he received a grant of land in the 
then remote wilderness along the Merrimac River, and 
in what is now the town of Salisbury erected a log-cabin, 
with no other white man's habitation between it and the 
Canadian border. The elder Webster, who was twice 
married, commemorated his second union by building 

16 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

a one-story frame house hard by the log-cabin of the first 
days. Daniel was born in this house, which still exists 
as the wing of a later structure a few rods from its 
original location. Its former site is now marked by a 
huge boulder, and by the side of the latter is a tall 
staff, from which a flag floats on pleasant days. 

Near the boulder is a well, shaded by an elm tree 
which was planted in 1768 by Webster's father. For 
sixty summers the son, at regular visits, sat beneath its 
spreading branches and looked upon the fields his 
father's labors had wrested from the wilderness. The 
Salisbury farm is situated about two miles from the 
subsequent homestead of the Websters in South Frank- 
lin. It has few fertile spots. Granite rocks are every- 
where visible, and give an air of barrenness to the scene. 
Yet standing upon the spot the thought is strong within 
one that these "crystal hills gray and cloud-topped" 
among which Webster was cradled, and the rough pas- 
tures in which he grew to man's estate left their quicken- 
ing impress upon the majestic physical and mental 
stature which gave him a foremost place among great 
Americans. One also loves to think that among these 
wild hills he wooed the gentle-natured woman who be- 
came his wife and the mother of his children. Win- 

17 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

some Grace Fletcher was a school-teacher in Salisbury, 
not far from Webster's birthplace, when the young 
lawyer with the great dark eyes took her heart and life 
into his keeping. Tradition has it that he one day as- 
sisted her in disentangling a skein of silk. Then taking 
up a piece of tape, he said : 

" Grace, cannot you help me to tie a knot that will 
never untie ? " 

"I don't know, Daniel," was the blushing answer, 
"but I am willing to try." 

The knot was tied, and until her death twenty years 
later hers was the most gracious influence in her hus- 
band's life, her memory remaining with him as a bene- 
diction until the end. 

It is a delightful drive on a summer's morning from 
Salisbury to the shaded town of Hanover, the seat of 
Dartmouth College, whose chief boast is that it was 
Webster's alma mater. Ambition for his children was 
the controlling motive in the later life of Captain Eben- 
ezer Webster, and he strained his scanty means to the 
utmost to give his youngest son the best education 
within reach, first at Exeter Academy and later at Dart- 
mouth. In 1797, Daniel, a slender lad of fifteen, entered 
the latter institution, then in its struggling infancy. 

18 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

Desperately poor, despite his father's sacrifices, his four 
years in college were years not only of hard labor, but 
of struggle against obstacles that would have balked a 
weaker spirit. When a friend sent him a recipe for 
greasing boots, he hastened to thank him. "But," he 
wrote, "my boots need other doctoring, for they not 
only admit water, but even peas and gravel-stones." 
His college days, nevertheless, were happy ones, and his 
classmates were wont in after years to recall his singular 
charm of presence and his rapid progress in the studies 
he liked — Latin, literature and liistory. They also 
recalled that he was ambitious to lead even then, and 
that, all things considered, he was the most remarkable 
of the undergraduates of his time. " If anything diffi- 
cult was to be done," writes one of them, "the task was 
laid upon Webster." 

The visitor to Hanover comes upon more than one 
interesting reminder of the college days of this " mighty 
man in the moulding process." During his freshman 
and sophomore years Webster was an inmate of the 
house of Humphrey Farrar, which yet stands near the 
corner of Main and Lebanon Streets, and during his 
junior year he occupied the south chamber of what is 
now known as the McMurphy house at the corner of 

19 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Main Street and Webster Avenue. He lodged during 
his senior year in Dartmouth Hall, the oldest of the 
college buildings, and tradition has it that his was the 
room then and now numbered 1, northwest corner of 
the third story. Webster was graduated from Dart- 
mouth in 1801; and that until the end it held a warm 
place in his affections is attested by his oft-repeated 
visits to Hanover in after years and by the noble service 
which he rendered the college in one of the greatest of 
his triumphs at the bar. Nor are those which have to 
do with Webster the only cherished associations Hanover 
and Dartmouth offer to the lover of books and book- 
men: James Freeman Clarke was born in the town, and 
Rufus Choate and George P. Marsh were graduated 
from the college, where Oliver Wendell Holmes and 
Arthur Sherburne Hardy were professors in the morning 
of their careers. 

The writer's way when he left Hanover led through 
Concord and the countryside hamlet of Amherst to 
Portsmouth by the sea. Concord guards the dust of 
Franklin Pierce and of that stout apostle of freedom, 
John P. Hale, but the pleasant town claims a place in 
this chronicle by reason of its memories of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, and of that singular genius, who, born plain 

20 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

Benjamin Thompson, lives in history as Count Rum- 
ford. It was in a fine old house yet standing in South 
Spring Street, Concord, not, however, on its original 
site, that Emerson wooed and wed Ellen Louisa Tucker, 
the beloved wife of his youth so soon to be taken from 
him by death, while the Rolfe and Rumford Asylum in 
Hale Street helps to keep fresh the romance of Thomp- 
son's early manhood. 

The wealthiest man in the Concord of colonial days 
was Colonel Benjamin Rolfe, who in 1764 built for 
himself a nobie dwelling. Five years later, at the age 
of sixty, he took to wife the daughter of the minister of 
the town, a comely maiden of half his years. Then the 
colonel died, and when in 1772 Thompson, a handsome 
stripling in the flush of his youth, came to Concord to 
teach school the widow promptly lost her heart to him. 
He was nineteen and she was thirty-three, but the tiny 
god of love mocks at disparity in age as well as at locks 
and keys. So the young schoolmaster and the widow 
were married at the end of a brief courtship, and took 
up their abode in the mansion of the old colonel, where 
was born their only child, Sarah Thompson, afterwards 
Countess of Rumford. When the Revolution broke 
Thompson chose the side of the King, and in 1775 filed 

21 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

to England. The remainder of his long career, a career 
of brilliant and practically unbroken success, belongs 
to the history of science and political economy in 
Europe. He never lost interest, however, in his native 
land and when, in 1791, he was, for his scientific work, 
raised to the dignity of Count of the Holy Roman Em- 
pire, he chose for his title that of Rumford — the early 
name of the town where he had won his bride, and 
where his first advancement had come to him 

The Count's wife who, as he often declared in after 
years, "had married him rather than he her," never 
followed him across seas, but shortly after her death, 
in 1792, their daughter joined her father in Europe, and 
when, in 1814, he, too, passed away, was allowed to take 
the title of Countess. After long residence in France 
and England, the Countess of Rumford, in 1844, re- 
turned to America. Eight years later she died in the 
house in which she was born, and which, with an ade- 
quate fund for its support provided in her will, — the 
death, in 1809, of her childless step-brother, Paul Rolfe, 
had made her a rich woman, — now serves as an asylum 
for poor girls. Though Count Rumford's fame has 
been somewhat dimmed by the years, and for his 
countrymen blemished by what many of them would 

22 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

term his political apostacy, the fact remains that it was 
founded upon scientific labors of the first importance, 
while the clear, forcible English of his essays, which are 
models of their kind, entitles their author to high rank 
among America's early men of letters. Those who 
have read them will not deny the fine old mansion in 
which Thompson's career may be said to have begun 
a place among our literary landmarks. 

A prophet is too often without honor in his own 
country, but the chief boast of the folk of Amherst is 
that there Horace Greeley passed his boyhood. The 
house in which the founder of the New York " Tribune " 
was born on a May day in 1811 is a story-and-a-half 
cottage of old-fashioned farm style still in a fair state of 
preservation, and is situated some four miles back from 
the village. It stands now as then in a lonesome and 
unfrequented region on a farm of eighty acres of as 
rocky and unproductive land as can be found in all 
New England. Yet to the writer its bleak aspect 
seemed in keeping with the somber life story of its 
whilom owner, Zaccheus Greeley. The career of that 
sturdy but unsuccessful laborer instanced the helpless- 
ness of the human thistledown before the winds of 

fate. Industrious and willing, but ever a failure, he 

23 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

struggled with debt from youth to old age, nor did 
his troubles end until his son came to man's estate 
and managed to ease his declining years. 

When the boy Horace was ten years old the Greeley 
family was sold out of house, lands and goods for debt, 
and left Amherst to begin the wanderings which ended 
finally in western Pennsylvania. Before that, however, 
the younger Greeley had given proof of the intense love of 
knowledge and of the mental and moral endowment that 
were to make him with the passage of the years the 
strongest individual force in the journalism of his time. 
It is, as has been noted, a subject of pride to the people 
of Amherst that in their town the great editor first saw 
the light, and aged residents are quick to declare that 
during his lifetime all of his former townsmen borrowed 
from him their political opinions. Above the front 
door of the old homestead is now posted the legend: 
"In this house Horace Greeley was born." The 
present owner told the writer that it is often sought by 
visitors, despite the fact that it lies so far removed from 
the beaten lines of travel. 

Portsmouth is an old town as things are reckoned on 
this side of the sea, and, though its glory has in a meas- 
ure departed, one feels as he saunters along its broad, 

Hi 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

quiet, tree-girt streets that it has known how to grow 
old in a graceful and becoming way. Time was when 
it carried on an extensive trade with the West Indies, 
and promised as a maritime port to eclipse both Boston 
and New York. It was this promise of future great- 
ness that, in 1807, shortly after his admission to the bar, 
drew Daniel Webster to the town, where during nine 
years of fruitful labor he grew into greatness as a lawyer 
and gained the transcendent power of speech which 
made him supreme among the orators of his time. 
Portsmouth holds few intimate reminders of Webster's 
residence in the town, for the fire which visited it in 
December, 1813, laying bare a tract fifteen acres in ex- 
tent, destroyed his home and library. However, the 
gambrel-roofed cottage to which he brought his bride 
yet stands in Vaughan Street, and he must often have 
been a guest in many another old house spared by the 
years. One of these borrows added interest from the 
fact that it was in his last days the summer home of 
Francis Parkman, the historian. 

This is the Wentworth mansion at Little Harbor, in 
the outskirts of Portsmouth, a picturesque rambling 
pile which time and change have touched Avith gentle 
hand. The visitor approaches it by a lane, which wind- 

25 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



ing through pine woods and outcropping ledges of rock 
touched off in summer with juniper and flaming sumach, 
leads at last to a field on the end of a point in the bay, 
and past a few old apple trees, to the mansion standing 
close to the waterside. Built in 1750 by Benning 
Wentworth, for more than a quarter of a century royal 
governor of New Hampshire, the old house, with its 
many angles and gables, its quaint rooms connected in 
the oddest manner by unexpected steps leading up and 
down, and its one spacious high-studded apartment 
where the governor's council used to meet, remains 
nearly as its first owner left it. 

One has but to cross the threshold of the door to step 
into the colonial period, and to be a witness, in fancy, 
of the romantic episode turned to account by Long- 
fellow in the last series of the " Tales of a Wayside Inn " 
— the marriage of Governor Benning Wentworth with 
Martha Ililton, a union very like that of King Cophetua 
and the Beggar Maid. Martha Hilton, so runs the 
story, was a Portsmouth waif who when still "a thin 
slip of a girl" went to live as a servant with Governor 
Wentworth in this mansion looking out to sea. She 
grew with the years into one of the fairest of women, 
and the governor, a lonely widower, fell in love with 

2G 



THROUGH LONGFELLOW'S COUNTRY 

and resolved to marry her. Accordingly, keeping his 
own counsel, he invited a number of his friends, the 
Reverend Arthur Brown among them, to dine with 
him on his birthday. The dinner ended and pipes and 
tobacco laid before the company, Martha Hilton, 
garbed as became a great man's bride, glided into the 
room, and stood blushing in front of her master and 
his guests. Then the governor, rising from his seat, 

"Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down. 
And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown: 
'This is my birthday; it shall likewise be 
My wedding day; and you shall marry me.'" 

"To whom, your excellency .'*" asked the rector. 

"To this lady," was the answer of the governor, as 
he took Martha Hilton by the hand. The reverend 
gentleman hesitated, knowing the humble footing 
Martha had held in the household, but his host would 
brook no delay. "As the chief magistrate of New 
Hampsliire," cried the governor, "I command you to 
marry me." This order was not to be disobeyed, and 
so the pretty serving-maid became Lady Wentworth. 
She proved, moreover, a faultless wife, and gave the 
governor so much happiness during the short span of 
life that remained to him that he left her his entire 

27 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

estate. One regrets to add that her second husband, 
a retired colonel of the British army, who bore the name 
of Wentworth but was in no way related to the first, 
speedily wasted her fortune in high living, and then 
died, tradition has it, by his own hand. 

The mansion at Little Harbor is now owned and 
occupied by J. T. Coolidge, Jr., whose wife was the 
daughter of Francis Parkman. There, as already 
stated, the historian at the close of his life passed many 
summer days, perhaps the happiest and most peaceful 
of his heroic and fruitful career. There also, it should 
be added, he wrote a part of "Montcalm and Wolfe," 
and finished "A Half Century of Conflict," with which 
he brought to a close the labors of a lifetime. 



28 



Chapter II 
Wanderings in Whittier Land 

Benjamin P. Shillaber and James T. Fields were 
natives of Portsmouth, and a house yet standing at 
23 Court Street was the birthplace of Thomas Bailey 
Aldrich. Celia Thaxter was also born in the old town, 
but passed most of her days on the Isles of Shoals, nine 
miles out at sea from Portsmouth. The writer on a 
sunny summer morning boarded a small steamer on 
the Portsmouth water-front, and, passing pleasant 
Kitteryside, where stands the stately house built by 
Sir William Pepperell, hero of Louisburg, gained the 
open sea and made for Appledore, the largest of these 
isles. There are nine of them in all, tips of sunken 
mountains that bristle with danger for sailor-folk ap- 
proaching them at night or in a fog, and no after-comer 
can tell their story half so well as Celia Thaxter has 
told it with her own poetic pen. 

She was but five years old when in 1840 her father, 
Thomas B. Laighton, chagrined at some disappoint- 
ment in his hope of a public career, resolved to withdraw 

29 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

forever from the world, and, accepting the position of 
hghthouse keeper at White Island, the one of the isles 
most remote from the mainland, went there to live 
with his wife and children. Thence, at the end of six 
years, he removed with his family to Appledore, of 
which he became the owner. There his daughter Celia, 
with her brothers, her books and the sea for comrades, 
grew toward womanhood. She was barely fifteen, 
however, when she was borne away by a husband, a 
man of education and gentle birth, who had come as a 
missionary to the fishermen on the adjacent island, 
called Star. Thereafter the mainland was her home, 
but for more than thirty years she returned to spend 
each summer on Appledore. 

A growing throng of vacation-time visitors, mean- 
while, made discovery of Mrs. Thaxter's island retreat, 
and her cottage, with windows looking out on the breezy 
sparkling sea, became as the years went on the meeting- 
place of a devoted circle of choice spirits, who selected 
themselves rather than were selected from the vast 
number of persons who frequented the great house of 
entertainment conducted by her brothers. Yet there 
was another side to the life of this gifted and beautiful 
woman — her never-ending efforts to contribute to the 

30 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

comfort of the humble folk about her — and this is 
illustrated from a leaf in her book on the Shoals. 
During a long, dreary storm two men had come in a 
boat to Appledore, asking for help. "A little child," 
she writes, " had died at Star Island, and they could not 
sail to the mainland, and had no means to construct a 
coffin among themselves. All day I had watched the 
making of that little chrysalis, and at night the last nail 
was driven in and it lay across a bench, in the midst 
of the litter of the workshop, and a curious stillness 
seemed to emanate from the senseless boards. I went 
back to the house and gathered a handful of scarlet 
geraniums, and returned with it through the rain. The 
brilliant blossoms were sprinkled with glittering drops. 
I laid them in the little coffin, while the wind wailed 
so sorrowfully outside, and the rain poured against the 
windows. Two men came through the mist and storm, 
and one swung the little light shell to his shoulder, 
and they carried it away, and the gathering dark- 
ness shut down and hid them as they tossed among 
the waves. I never saw the little girl, but where they 
buried her I know; the lighthouse shines close by, 
and every night the quiet, constant ray steals to her 
grave and softly touches it, as if to say, with a caress, 

31 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

'Sleep well! Be thankful you are spared so much 
that I see humanity endure, fixed here forever where 
I stand.'" 

In June, 1894, Mrs. Thaxter returned for the last 
time to Appledore. A few weeks later death came to 
her, as she had often voiced the wish that it would come, 
almost without warning ; and on a quiet afternoon in 
the late summer her brothers and those nearest to her 
bore her body to its burial on her island, within sound 
of " the sad, caressing murmur of the wave that breaks 
in tender music on the shore." The writer found her 
grave a mound of blossoms, the care of loving hands, 
and standing beside it he was made to feel that with the 
silent singer all was well. 

The Isles of Shoals have also their memories of John 
Greenleaf Whittier, for one of the Quaker poet's 
pleasures in the last years of his life was an occasional 
visit to Appledore. Fond of the comfort of a large 
hotel, *' he liked," writes Mrs. Fields, " to make arrange- 
ments with a group of his more particular friends to 
meet him there ; and when he was well enough to leave 
his room, he might be seen in some carefully chosen 
corner of the great piazzas enjoying the keenest happi- 
ness in the society of those dear lo him." Now and 

32 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

then he would pass whole days in Mrs. Thaxter's par- 
lor, often for hours taking no part in the conversation 
around him, and the friend just quoted adds a welcome 
glimpse of the comradeship of the white-haired bard 
and his sister singer. 

It was the Sabbath and Whittier, sitting patiently in 
the corner of the pretty room, had wearied of the idle 
talk of the idle people who had been drifting in and out 
during the day, and longed for something that would 
move those about him to higher levels. Suddenly, as 
if the idea had struck him like an inspiration, he rose, 
and taking a volume of Emerson from the library, he 
opened to one of the discourses, and handing it to Celia 
Thaxter asked her to read it aloud, saying he thought 
all would like to hear it. "After she had ended," says 
Mrs. Fields, "he took up the thread of the discourse, 
and talked long and earnestly upon the beauty and 
necessity of worship — a necessity consequent upon 
the nature of man, upon his own weakness, and his 
consciousness of the Divine spirit within him. His 
whole heart was stirred, and he poured himself out 
toward us as if he longed, like the prophet of old, to 
breathe a new life into us. I could see that he reproached 
himself for not having spoken out in this way before, 

33 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

but his enfranchised spirit took only a stronger flight 
for the delay." 

It is a short sail, and, on a summer afternoon, a 
pleasant one from Appledore to Newburyport, where 
Whittier's fledgling efforts as a poet found their way 
into print. Newburyport might sit for its portrait as 
an ideal seaport town. It lies on a ridge at the mouth 
of the Merrimac, which here widens into a noble harbor. 
Cross streets run down the hillsides to this harbor, while 
High Street, the main thoroughfare of the town, stretches 
parallel with the river for more than six miles, shaded 
all the way by ancient elms and lined with rich farms 
and pleasant residences that have wide meadows and 
orchards beliind, and sloping lawns in front. And 
always the sound of the sea is heard by dwellers in the 
town, while at every turn one comes upon reminders 
of the long departed days when wealth and splendor 
made their home here, and the merchants, whose florid 
faces, preserved for us by Smibert and Copley, bespeak 
familiar acquaintance with good cheer, sent their ships 
and captains to trade in all of the Seven Seas. 

Newburyport, moreover, holds an honored if modest 
place in the history of thought and letters. Here 
Theophilus Parsons, "great and venerable name," was 

34 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

born and bred, and, studying law with him, Rufus King 
and John Quincy Adams passed their early manhood. 
Here George Whitefield, of whom Buckle wrote, that 
if oratory was to be judged by its effects he was the most 
eloquent man since the apostles, died in a house yet 
standing at 9 School Street, and here he takes liis rest 
under the pulpit of the Old South Church at the corner 
of School and Federal Streets, where for nearly a hun- 
dred years there has stood a marble monument to his 
memory. Cornelius C. Felton, scholar anxl college 
president, was born in Old Newbury; George Lunt, a 
poet of no mean pretensions, was a native of Newbury- 
port; here Harriet Livermore, the devoted missionary 
whom "Snowbound" celebrates, was born; here 
Richard Hildreth began his work as a historian; and 
here John Pierpont wrote his best verse, as did Hannah 
Gould and Lucy Hooper in later years. 

Caleb Cushing, a man who like Bacon took all 
knowledge for his kingdom, was born in Salisbury, just 
across the river from Newburyport, and died in a stately 
house set in spacious grounds at 63 High Street. James 
Parton, the historian, also passed his last years in the 
town, and at the corner of High and Oakland Streets 
one comes upon the roomy house fronted by a wide 

35 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

stretch of lawn in which he wrote his master work — 
the "Life of Voltaire." Yet another author once a 
resident of Newburyport is Thomas Wentworth Higgin- 
son, who, when filling a Unitarian pulpit in the town, 
lived at 15 Pond Street in a house small and plain to the 
point of bareness, but whose beautiful outlook must 
have compensated its occupant for what it lacked in 
size and comfort. 

A dozen years after Colonel Higginson had left New- 
buryport and the pulpit, there was submitted to James 
Russell Lowell, then editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," 
a sparkling and original story of Paris life. The author, 
hitherto unknown to fame, was Harriet Prescott, a 
young woman living in Newburyport. Lowell, deeply 
impressed by the story when he read it in manuscript, 
was at first inclined to regard it as a clever translation 
from the French; but Colonel Higginson, who knew the 
author and had helped to develop her budding talents, 
became responsible, when she appealed to him, for its 
originality. Then the story was accepted, and when 
it appeared in the " Atlantic Monthly, " early in 1859, 
it made the author's reputation. 

Six years later Miss Prescott, who meanwhile had 
published "Sir Rohan's Ghost" and "The Amber 

30 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

Gods," became the wife of Richard S. Spofford, a 
lawyer of Newburyport, and in due course of time they 
made their home on a picturesque island in the Merri- 
mac, midway between Newburyport and Amesbury. 
There they lived for many years, and there the wife 
now a widow still makes her home in summer. One 
would have to go far to find a more charming retreat. 
Great pine trees on one side of the quaint old house in 
which Mrs. Spofford dwells and the river rushing past 
on the other make its seclusion complete, while the 
romance and poetry of sky and stream, of wood and 
field, which give richness and color alike to her prose 
and verse, are a part of her island's very atmosphere. 
The writer when he beheld it for the first time gave 
thanks for the chain of circumstances which made it a 
poet and story-teller's abiding-place. 

Mrs. Spofford and her original and delightful art still 
belong to the present and the future. There is, how- 
ever, one figure from Newburyport's past which seems 
a living presence to the latter-day visitor — that of 
William Lloyd Garrison, who was born here and here 
spent the first twenty-one years of his life. Garrison's 
modest birthplace yet stands at 3 School Street, flanked 
on one side by the vestry of the Old South Church and 

37 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

on the other by the house in which Whitefield died. 
Time has taken the school-house on the Mall where he 
obtained, in six months, all the grammar-school educa- 
tion he ever had, but the office of the "Herald," in 
which he served his long seven years' apprenticeship 
as a printer, is located now as then at 42 Federal Street, 
in the second and third stories of a brick building ex- 
tending from Pleasant Street to Thread Needle Alley. 
His son writes that he rarely visited the town in later 
life without climbing its stairs, and that he liked to tell 
that it was owing to his fondness for Newburyport, and 
his insupportable homesickness on two or three occa- 
sions, when he was sent elsewhere to seek a livelihood, 
that he ever came to learn the printing business, and to 
master the weapon which enabled him to carry on his 
thirty years' warfare against slavery. 

Again, four doors removed, one finds at 50 Federal 
Street the building in whose topmost story was published 
the "Free Press," the first newspaper founded and 
edited by Garrison. An early subscriber to the " Free 
Press," when it appeared in 1826, was John Whittier, 
a Quaker farmer in the neighboring town of Haverhill. 
This farmer's nineteen-year-old son and namesake was, 
in his spare hours, a maker of verses, and a daughter of 

38 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 



the household, feeling confident that some of her 
brother's poems were as good as those she saw in the 
poet's corner of the "Free Press," determined to offer 
one of them to that paper without giving the editor any 
hint of the source from whence it came. And so Garri- 
son one day found under the door of his oflSce a poem 
entitled "The Exile's Departure," and signed "W." 
The piece had been written a few months before, and 
Mary Whittier had selected it as in her opinion the one 
most likely to be accepted. 

She sent it without her brother's knowledge, and it 
was, therefore, a great surprise to the young poet when 
he opened the paper, tossed him by the passing postman, 
and turned to the column in which poetry was usually 
placed, to find himself in print for the first time. He 
was mending fences with his father, and so great was his 
joy that he had to be called several times before he 
was fully awake to this workaday world. He finally 
obeyed his father's command to put up the paper and 
return to his task, but he could not resist the temptation 
to take it again and again from his pocket to stare at his 
lines in print. He has somewhere said that he was 
sure, such was his amazed delight, that he did not read 
a word of the poem all the time that he looked at it. 

39 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



One summer day not long afterward a stranger appeared 
and asked to see Mr. John Greenleaf Whittier. The 
visitor was Garrison, to whom Whittier's sister had 
divulged the secret of the authorship of his verses, and 
who had come to pay his respects to the new^ poet. 
There is no record of w4iat passed between Whittier 
and Garrison on that long gone summer day, and be- 
tween the pair and the parents of Whittier; but that 
they were made to see that there was a future for their 
boy may be inferred from the fact that within a twelve- 
month he was sent to an academy in Haverhill. The 
end of another year found him fairly launched on his 
long career as journalist and poet. 

It is in these days but a short hour's ride by trolley 
from Newburyport, across Deer Island, through Ames- 
bury and thence along the north bank of the Merrimac 
to Haverhill. Three miles east of the latter place the 
bed of the railway descends into a long wooded valley 
through which a little stream makes its way southward 
to the river. Somewhere on the banks of this stream 
stalwart Thomas Whittier, first of his line in America, 
built himself a log house, and reared his brood of sturdy 
sons and daughters. He removed thence in his old 
age to a point about half a mile higher up the valley. 



40 



WANDERINGS IN WHIT TIER LAND 

and there erected another house which remained for 
the better part of two hundred years the home of his 
descendants. The site of this second house, in which 
John Greenleaf Whittier was born in December, 1807, 
is a spot so isolated that from its erection to the present 
time no neighbor's roof has been in sight. The house 
was partially destroyed by fire in 1902, but has been 
carefully restored on the old lines. 

The visitor to the Whittier homestead finds it a low 
gray structure with two stories in front and the roof 
sloping down to a single story in the rear. It stands 
close to the road and is reached by a pathway which of 
old was swept twice a day. A corner room facing the 
east was Whittier's study. It remains in the same 
condition as when he occupied it, and the great fire- 
place, the warped floor and the antique window panes, 
the rough uneven ceiling and protruding beams which 
greet the visitor also kept the poet silent company in 
boyhood and early manhood. Just across a narrow 
entryway is the room, unaltered save in minor ways, in 
which he was born, and thence one passes to the 
kitchen which was the scene of the winter's evening 
in "Snowbound." The great chimney running up 
from this room stands as perfect as when built, and 

41 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

above the fireplace hangs a bull's-eye watch, such as 
in the poet's boyhood 

"Ticking its weary circuit through, 
Pointed with mutely warning sign 
Its black hand to the hour of nine." 

The Whittier homestead, it is good to know, has been 
taken in charge by a society devoted to its preservation, 
and no labor or effort spared to bring about the old 
appearance of the estate. The rude horse-block holds 
its long-accustomed place at the front gate, the well- 
sweep still throws its shadow across the grass in the 
dooryard, and the barn which faces the farther side of 
the road keeps the same internal arrangements as in 
Whittier 's boyhood, while behind the house rises Job's 
Hill, flecked with oak trees under which he often 
must have played in the vanished days. An orchard 
occupies the lower slope of this hill, and in its further- 
most corner the visitor finds the tiny burial-plot in 
which Whittier's Quaker ancestors take their rest, 
the level grass above them unbroken by monument 
or headstone. 

A fringe of trees stretches from the southern side of 

the orchard to and beyond a rivulet which crosses the 

road in front of the house on its way to join the County 

42 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

Brook, the main stream in the valley. Two centuries 
ago a dam was built across the rivulet for power, but 
the waters finally cut their way through the rude 
masonry, and until 1902 the "gap in the old wall" re- 
mained as when Whittier wrote of it in his poem, 
" Telling the Bees." Now, however, the dam has been 
rebuilt, making a pretty waterfall in the glen through 
which the rivulet flows. Thence it is a short walk to 
the site of the little school-house sung by the poet " In 
School Days." The building was sold and removed 
many years ago, but there remain faint traces of the 
foundations, around which still " the sumachs grow and 
blackberry vines are running," while a faint depression 
in the greensward yet shows where 

"The feet that, creeping slow to school, 
Went storming out to playing," 

and helps the visitor to call up the picture of the sweet 
brown-eyed heroine of the country school, the charm- 
ing child whose gentle heart was pained because she 
had spelt the word and gone above her boy hero: 

" Still memory to a gray-haired man 
That sweet child-face is showing. 
Dear girl ! the grasses on her grave 
Have forty years been growing ! 
43 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

"He lives to learn, in life's hard school, 
How few who pass above him 
Lament their triumph and his loss, 
Like her, — because they love him." 

Whittier's life until his thirtieth year was mainly 
spent in the Haverhill homestead. He was absent 
from 1828 to 1831, engaged in editorial work in Boston 
and Hartford, but soon after the death of his father 
in the latter year he returned to Haverhill and worked 
the farm, taking his place in the field with the hired 
hands, and driving his team in the autumn days to Rock 
Bridge, the head of the tide-water in the Merrimac, to 
exchange his apples and vegetables for salt fish out of 
Maine. It was during this period also that, counting 
the cost with Quaker coolness of judgment, he allied 
himself to the small and unpopular band of reformers 
who, led by his friend Garrison, were preaching the 
gospel of freedom for the bonded blacks. This step 
involved the sacrifice of all his ambitions, but heart and 
soul he linked himself to the issue, sending forth one 
after another poems whose lyric fire stirred and warmed 
the young hearts of the North, and he lived to witness 
the triumph of a righteous cause, and to know that his 
championship of it through long years of poverty and 

44 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

conflict had brought him nearer to the people than any 
other poet of his time. 

The Haverhill farm was sold in April, 1836, and a 
few weeks afterward Whittier bought a house at the 
corner of Friend and Pleasant Streets, Amesbury. His 
mother, sister and aunt, all three dear to every lover of 
"Snowbound," kept him company in the migration 
from Haverhill, and remained members of his house- 
hold until, one by one, they were borne to their graves 
on the near hillside where now the poet lies beside 
them. A very modest affair when Whittier became 
its owner, the Amesbury cottage grew with his fortunes 
until it became a two-storied, many-roomed house, 
designed for comfort and dedicated to a generous hos- 
pitality. It stands near the center of the town, and the 
visitor finds it embowered in trees, many of which were 
planted by the poet. Like the Haverhill homestead, 
it has passed since his death into the keeping of a 
memorial association, made up of Amesbury women, 
some of whom were for many years personal friends 
of the poet, and who lovingly preserve it as nearly as 
possible as it was in his lifetime. 

The parlor is at the right of the entrance, and at the 
left are two smaller apartments long used by the poet 

45 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

and his mother as bed-rooms. Above the parlor mantel 
has hung for two and forty years a large oil painting 
of Mrs. Whittier, recalling to the visitor the words once 
spoken by the son to a friend, " My home is where my 
mother's picture hangs"; and at one side of the room 
stands the ancient ink-stained desk used by the poet 
from 1836 to 1867, on which all the work of those years 
was done — his anti-slavery and war poems, " The 
Barefoot Boy," " Songs of Labor," " Barbara Frietchie," 
" Snowbound " and many others. Back of the parlor, 
reached by a small hall and semi-detached from the 
rest of the house, is the poet's study, the "garden 
room" of his later years, a sunny, simply furnished 
apartment which has undergone no change since his 
death. His favorite rocking-chair still stands before 
the window from which he loved to survey his garden, 
with its many fruit trees and its plots for flowers and 
vegetables, while the carpet, the furniture, the books 
and pictures, and the newer desk which replaced the 
old one in the parlor, remain as Whittier left them. 

It is a short walk from the Whittier house to the 
green dome of Powow Hill, a beacon to land and sea 
for many miles around. Powow Hill was one of the 
places to which the poet was wont to lead his friends, 

46 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

and from its summit the eye of the later comer can 
gradually travel over the scene of nearly all of his fa- 
mous ballads. Away to the north one can discern the 
White Mountains and the lovely region of Ossipee and 
the Bearcamp, where Whittier passed many summer 
months, while in the nearer distance, more like a cloud 
than a mountain, rises the isolated cone of Agamenticus. 
The visitor's glance, passing still to the southward, 
rests next on the Isles of Shoals, set in encircling blue, 
and then on the long beaches of Hampton and Salisbury, 
scene of the "Tent on the Beach" and the "Wreck of 
Ri vermouth." The Boar's Head, a most noble prom- 
ontory, juts out from Hampton, and thence, still rang- 
ing southward, the eye passes over Plum Island and 
the sand dunes of Ipswich to rest on the headland of 
Cape Ann and the Gloucester shore, where stood of old 
the "garrison of Cape Ann." In the distance, inland, 
nestles Dan vers, scene of the "Witch of Wenham"; 
close to the western horizon lies Haverhill, birthplace 
of the poet; Wachusett towers in the background, 
and to the northwest ranges the lofty Pawtuckaway 
hills, thus completing the circuit. 

Such is the rugged, rustic, picturesque land, made up 
of hillside and valley, croft, meadow and forest, and 

47 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

rimmed by sand dune and salt wave, which the genius 
of Whittier has clothed with undying romance. It is 
all lovingly depicted in his verse, and the visitor to it 
finds his memory loAingly cherished by those who dwell 
there. The poet's afternoon of life was filled with peace 
and sunshine, and of good will and helpfulness to those 
about him. There was scarcely a resident of Amesbury 
whom he did not know by name, and they in return 
knew his kindly salutation and beneficent smile. He 
loved children, who were always encouraged to swarm 
about him; his hand was ever open to the poor, who 
found in it something more lasting than its firm pres- 
sure, and people coming to him in grief and trouble 
went away with hearts made lighter by his counsel. 
The story is told of a friend, who, pursued by the idea 
of the sin against the Holy Ghost, felt himself doomed 
to damnation and sought the poet for comfort. 

"And so thee really thinks thee will go to hell.^" 
said Whittier. " Oh, I am sure of it," cried the sufferer. 
" Does thee hate thy fellow-men ? " asked Whittier. 
"No, no," said his unhappy friend. "Don't thee hate 
God, then?" came the next question. "I love Him, 
whatever happens to me," was the answer. "Don't 
thee hate God, who would send thee to hell, and let 

48 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

others, who thee knows have led worse hves, go to 
heaven ? " pursued the poet. " No, I am glad of every 
one that is saved, even if I am to be a castaway," was 
the quick response. "Now what does thee think the 
devil will do with thee "^ How can he use thee — one 
who loves the God that condemns him to torment, one 
who loves his fellow-men, and would keep them out of 
the clutches of Satan — how can the devil employ thee 
or endure thee.'*" The wretched man laughed for the 
first time in months, and from that moment shook off 
his morbid terrors. 

Wliittier did not come into his own as a poet until the 
Civil War had ended the contest for the abolition of 
slavery. Then it was that, the long day's labor done, 

"Legends and runes 
Of credulous days, old fancies that had lain 
Silent from boyhood, taking voice again, 
Warmed into life once more, even as the tune 
That, frozen in the fabled hunting horn, 
Thawed into sound," 

and a spirit which had only bided its time found tender 
and complete expression in the "Tent on the Beach," 
in "Snowbound," sweetest of all American idyls, and 
in songs and ballads of rarest grace and charm which 
gave him a secure place in hearts whose windows would 

49 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

never have opened to the piping of his more militant 
muse. Fame and its younger sister popularity came 
now in full and rounded measure to the aging man, 
and it was given him to know that the common people 
who loved the homely yet poetic scenes he sang had 
come to worship him as a part of them. Thus, as 
the years sped, the modest house in Amesbury became 
a Mecca for those who make pilgrimage to the shrines 
of genius and pure renown. 

The years of Whittier's growing fame, however, were 
also lonely ones, for they took from life many of those 
nearest and dearest to him. He was never married, 
and until 1864, when she died, his sister Elizabeth, a 
woman of gentle loveliness and rare poetic nature, was 
at the head of his household. His niece then became 
hostess in the Whittier home, but following her marriage 
in 1870 he went to Oak Knoll, Danvers, a morning's 
drive from Amesbury, where, with congenial relatives, 
he made his home during the greater part of the sixteen 
years of life that remained to him. The estate of Oak 
Knoll occupies some sixty acres, all finely laid out and 
adorned, and the roomy house which now became the 
poet's abiding place stands upon an eminence in the 
midst of a wide park. Winding driveways lead up to 

50 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

it from the road, and noble trees, in clumps and singly, 
shade the encircling lawn. There are also orchards of 
apples and pears, a garden flanked with grape vines, 
and near the eastern piazza of the house a flower garden 
where Wliittier delighted to work on pleasant mornings 
with rake, hoe and broom. 

The house at Oak Knoll, which has undergone no 
change since the poet's death, fronts the south, and has 
a couple of noble verandas, with pillars twenty feet 
high. Its rooms are large and sunny, and have those 
aids to cheerfulness — open fire-places, broad hearths, 
and shining andirons and fenders. Whittier's study, 
a sunny room with a delightful outlook, a wide fire- 
place, and a glass door opening upon the veranda, was 
especially built for him in a corner of the house, and 
here he penned his later poems. Friends have given 
us more than one delightful glimpse of the white-haired 
singer in his last days at Oak Knoll, with its perfect 
freedom and tender care. There were no clouds in the 
western sky as the sunset of his life burned slowly down. 
The end came in the early autumn of 1892, not at Ames- 
bury or Dan vers, but at Hampton Falls, N. H., while 
he was staying with the daughter of an old friend — 
the saintly woman who inspired one of the most 

51 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

spiritual and beautiful of his poems — "A Friend's 
Burial." He lies beside his kin in the Quaker burial- 
ground just without the town of Amesbury. A tall 
cedar guards his grave, and above it is a low piece of 
white marble graven with his name, the date of his 
birth and death, and nothing more. 

Among the visitors to Oak Knoll in the closing years 
of Whittier's life none were more welcome than Mary 
Abigail Dodge and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward. 
The elder of these gifted women was born and died in 
the pretty village of Hamilton, the name of which 
helped to form her pseudonym of Gail Hamilton, and 
where her long-time home, crowning a small hill, is 
pointed out as one of the landmarks of the town. It is 
a morning's drive from Newburyport to Hamilton, and 
thence to Andover on the Hill, the home of Mrs. Ward 
during the earlier years of her career. The way hither 
carries one past Dummer Academy — the oldest in- 
corporated academy in America — keeping stately 
company with the mansion house of the colonial gover- 
nor from whom it takes its name ; past the house which 
was once the home of Theophilus Parsons, and is now 
shaded by green elms perhaps of his planting; and, a 
mile or two beyond, past the old home of the Longfel- 

52 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 



lows, a house long abandoned as a dwelling but still 
held in the family name, and from which the pro- 
genitors of the poet removed to Portland. 

And so, greeted all the way by places it is worth one's 
while to see, the pilgrim out of Newburyport comes to 
Andover, and to the house in which the daughter of 
Austin Phelps passed her girlhood and early woman- 
hood. Mrs. Ward was born in Boston, but when she 
was three years old her father became a professor in 
Andover Seminary and took up the work which ended 
only with his life. The Phelps house in Andover, 
familiar to every reader of "Chapters from a Life," 
is a big, square structure set in handsome grounds on 
the main street of the town, hardby the site of the origi- 
nal location of Phillips Academy, and across the way 
from the seminary buildings. Here Mrs. Ward passed 
a portion of each year until her marriage in 1888, and 
here many of her best known books, including " Gates 
Ajar," came into being. 

Andover has also its memories of Harriet Beecher 
Stowe, who lived here from 1853 to 1864 while her hus- 
band was a professor in the seminary. The ancient 
stone house which the Stowes occupied stands in Chapel 
Avenue, a few steps from the theological seminary, 

53 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

and, though now used as an inn, remains practically 
the same as when the author of " Uncle Tom's Cabin " 
"u^as its mistress. In this house Mrs. Stowe wrote 
" The Pearl of Orr's Island," " The Minister's Wooing " 
and other of her books, and received many distinguished 
visitors from this and alien lands. Thence it is but a 
short walk to her grave in the tiny burial-garth behind 
the chapel of the seminary where she sleeps between 
her husband and the son whose sudden and tragic death 
brought her the first great sorrow of her life. 

The writer mused for a time beside the low mound, 
rarely in summer without its guerdon of flowers, and 
then returning to the main thoroughfare of the town 
boarded a trolley-car which at the end of a short ride set 
hira down before the last home of Anne Bradstreet, 
whose verse gives her an lionored if modest place in our 
early literary annals. This uncommon woman was 
the child of Thomas Dudley, who left the stewardship 
of the Earl of Lincoln's estates in Old England to be- 
come first deputy governor and later governor of Massa- 
chusetts Colony in the New England then rearing on 
this side of the sea. She was married when a girl of 
sixteen to Simon Bradstreet and two years later, with 
her father, mother and husband, crossed the sea to 

54 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

enter upon the hard and perilous hfe of the Puritan 
pioneer. The Bradstreets helped to establish the 
settlements of Cambridge and Ipswich, and some time 
before 1644 claimed a place among the founders of the 
plantation which became the town of Andover. The 
first house which they built in Andover was destroyed 
by fire on a July night of 1666, and in the following 
year was replaced by the structure which still gives 
cheery welcome to the wayfarer. 

Here Anne Bradstreet passed her closing years, and 
here she died in 1672 at the age of sixty. Simon Brad- 
street removed to Salem soon after his wife's death, 
and the North Andover house became and remained 
for thirty years the home of their son. The younger 
Bradstreet died in 1702, and for more than a hundred 
years after 1707 the old house served as a manse for the 
successive ministers of the parish. Then it became 
the summer home of one of the merchant princes of 
Salem, and later still housed a boarding-school con- 
ducted by Simon Putnam, a famous schoolmaster of 
his day, who numbered among his pupils Amos Law- 
rence and that Chandler Bobbins who as tenth minister 
of the Second Church of Boston succeeded Ralph 
Waldo Emerson in the pulpit of the Mathers. Ita 

55 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

present occupants, lineally descended from one of the 
first settlers of the town, take honest pride in its history 
and careful preservation, and, an admirable example 
of the thorough-going handiwork of the colonial builder, 
it promises to easily outlast the new century. It faces 
the old Boston and Haverhill road, a short distance be- 
yond the railway station in North Andover, and just 
across the way rises the more stately manse which Judge 
Samuel Phillips built in 1755, and which served in after 
years first as a boyhood haunt and then as the summer 
home of his distinguished descendant, Phillips Brooks. 
Thence a short stroll afield leads one to the ancient 
burial-ground, hard by the site of the first meeting- 
house in the town, where it is said Anne Bradstreet's 
grave was made. This rests, however, on vague tradi- 
tion. No sign of the grave remains, and, of a certainty, 
no man knows her burial-place. 

It was while a resident of Ipswich that the pious and 
worthy spouse of Simon Bradstreet wrote most of the 
verse which Cotton Mather in his "Magnalia" pro- 
nounced " a grateful entertainment unto the ingenious, 
and a monument for her memory beyond the stateliest 
marbles." Ipswich was also long the home of Na- 
thaniel Ward, the wise and witty "Simple Cobbler of 

56 



WANDERINGS IN WHITTIER LAND 

Agawam," and so it was with two-fold interest that 
the writer shaped his return to Newburyport by way 
of the old town set upon its liills and along its river 
winding to the sea. Tradition points but vaguely to 
the site of Anne Bradstreet's Ipswich home, but a 
tablet set up by the local liistorical society tells the 
visitor that Nathaniel Ward's house stood on the east 
side of the village green, while, more interesting still, 
in the town's oldest God's Acre he has pointed out to 
him the grave of the first American ancestor of Ralph 
Waldo Emerson. The grave is that of Thomas Emer- 
son, a worthy baker from Durham in England who 
settled in Ipswich while it was yet the Agawam of the 
first days. Joseph Emerson, son of the Ipswich baker, 
became the pioneer minister of Mendon, and from him 
descended in the sixth generation the seer of Concord. 
No less noble was the issue of Anne Bradstreet and her 
sturdy Lincolnsliire helpmeet, for among their descen- 
dants were William Ellery Channing, the elder Richard 
Henry Dana, Oliver Wendell Holmes and Wendell 
Phillips — so firmly and deeply did their family tree 
take root in New World soil. 

One other Ipswich landmark claims a word — the 
site of the old tavern often mentioned by Sewall in his 

57 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

diary, and at a later time sketched by Whittier, who 
numbered it among his youthful haunts. This tavern, 
the latter tells us, was once renowned throughout New 
England, and drew its guests from the four corners of 
the commonwealth. Time long since claimed it for its 
own, but it lives again in the picture limned by the poet, 
and holds a place in the full sheaf of delightful memories 
wliich attend upon a journey through Whittier Land. 



58 



Chapter III 

The Salem of Hawthorne 

Whittier and Hawthorne promise to long remain 
the most distinctively American of the master figures 
of our literature; and it was with this thought lending 
zest to his rambles that the writer shaped his course 
from the region which inspired the verse of the one to 
the old town which the genius of the other has painted 
in somber yet unfading colors. As befitted the moods 
of the vacation-time idler, however, the route chosen 
was a roundabout and leisurely one, for it led from 
Newburyport to Gloucester, Choate Island, Manchester, 
Beverly Farms, and so through Lynn, Nahant and 
Marblehead to Salem. 

Epes Sargent, Edwin P. Whipple and William 
Winter were born in the Gloucester of hills and salt 
' breezes and rugged fisher folk; there for many years 
EHzabeth Stuart Phelps Ward has had her summer 
home; there within sound of the ocean, on a July day 
in 1901, the fruitful life of John Fiske came too soon to 
an end; and thence it is but an hour's sail to the early 

59 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

abiding-place of Rufus Choate, an island girt about by 
the waters of Essex River and lying a little way from 
the mainland, which has been for seven generations in 
the possession of the family whose name it bears. 
Rufus Choate was born on this island, on "Tuesday, 
October 1, at 3 o'clock p.m.," as his father, with the 
precision of an older time, recorded in the family Bible. 
Six months later the elder Choate removed from the 
island to the village of Essex on the mainland, but the 
old homestead was a favorite resort of the son both in 
his youth and in the later years which saw him holding 
a foremost place among the orators and advocates of 
his time. An arm of the sea flows pleasantly about 
Choate Island, and a little creek runs up to within a few 
rods of the old dwelling, built in the middle years of the 
eighteenth century, which is little changed from what 
it was in Rufus Choate 's boyhood — a two-storied 
heav'y-timbered structure, bare and weather-beaten, 
but with a cheerful outlook toward the marshes, the 
sea and the distant shore of Cape Ann. 

It is a short cry in these days of interlacing trolley 
roads from Choate Island to Manchester where, in other 
years and before fashion had claimed it for its own, the 
elder Richard Henry Dana, Cyrus A. Bartol and James 

60 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

T. Fields had their summer homes; and whence a lei- 
surely half hour's drive leads one to Beverly Farms, 
long the favorite vacation-time resort of Oliver Wendell 
Holmes, whose modest cottage, with vine-clad verandas, 
still holds its accustomed place not far from the water 
side. The doctor passed the summers and autumns 
of his closing years at Beverly Farms, and here he cele- 
brated most of the birthdays of his old age, "when 
many came as to a shrine." One of these visitors was 
William Dean Howells, who has put on record a delight- 
ful glimpse of the white-haired Autocrat as cheerily 
and serenely he waited the silent summons to cease 
from labor, tasting to the last the flavor of life, and 
keeping alive the flame of wit which a good fairy lit at 
his cradle. "He made me think," writes Howells, 
"of a bed of embers on which the ashes have thinly 
gathered, and which, when these are breathed away, 
sparkles and tinkles keenly up with all the freshness of 
a newly kindled fire." Dr. Holmes passed a part of 
his last summer at Beverly Farms, but the end, when 
it came, found him in his Boston home. 

Beverly and Lynn also hold their shrines for the 
literary pilgrim. A two-storied cottage, a little way 
removed from the main thoroughfare of the former 

61 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

town, was the birthplace of Lucy Larcom, and in a 
more pretentious structure yet standing in Cabot Street, 
Beverly, Wilson Flagg, modest forerunner of Thoreau 
and Burroughs, entered life. Yet another house near 
the village common was the first home of the poet and 
essayist, George E. Woodberry. Half a dozen villas 
on Lynn's breezy Ocean Road have now and again had 
for an occupant that poet of many homes, Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich, and midway of the same thoroughfare 
Prescott Place occupies in part the site of the house in 
which the historian of that name passed the last summers 
of his life. Prescott, at an earlier time, was for a quar- 
ter of a century a summer dweller at Nahant, occupying 
a roomy villa which, greatly altered in outward seeming, 
yet stands at Swallow's Cove, and holding an honorable 
place in a literary colony which included Longfellow, 
Agassiz and Motley, who there began his history of the 
Dutch Republic. The dwellings which these men once 
tenanted have vanished with the years, perhaps the 
last to go being the Longfellow house, which until 
its destruction by fire in May, 1896, stood on Willow 
Road, overlooking Broad Sound and Nahant Bay. 
This house was built by the poet near the close of 
his Harvard professorship, and there he spent every 

G2 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

summer for more than a score of years, "building up 
life," as he was wont to put it, "with solid blocks of 
idleness." Not all of Longfellow's days at Nahant, 
however, were idle ones, for there some of his best verse, 
including "The Bells of Lynn," came into being. 

Though quaint old Marblehead numbers neither 
story-teller nor poet among those native to her soil, she 
has given to the one a congenial theme in the romantic 
legend of the tavern maid, Agnes Surriage, and her love 
for the King's commissioner. Sir Harry Frankland, and 
to the other the story of Skipper Ireson, wrought by 
Whittier into the best of all his ballads. A level space 
in the upper reaches of the town is pointed out as the 
site of the long-gone cottage where a century and a half 
ago Agnes Surriage was born and grew to womanhood, 
beautiful Agnes Surriage who later without the name 
of wife followed her titled lover across the seas. They 
were in Lisbon when the great earthquake destroyed 
that city, and there, at peril of her life, Agnes Surriage 
rescued her companion from death in the ruins. 
Touched by her devotion he married her, and the 
romance which began for the young tavern-maid in 
Marblehead saw its close in London with the title for 
its heroine of "My Lady." 

63 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Again in the waterside section of Marblehead known 
as Oakum Bay the curious will find the aforetime home 
of luckless Floyd Ireson, who for his alleged refusal 
while skipper of the fishing schooner "Betty," home- 
ward bound from the Grand Banks, to go to the aid of 
another craft aleak and sinking in a rising storm, was 
tarred and feathered and haled through the town, not 
by the women, as Whittier has told, but by the men and 
boys of Marblehead. Ireson submitted in silence to 
the disgrace put upon him, only remarking when his 
sorry progress was ended : " Gentlemen, I thank you 
for my ride, but you will live to regret it." The skipper 
spoke as a prophet, for though he remained for years a 
marked man, shunned and execrated by his neighbors, 
justice was at last rendered to his memory through the 
confession of the members of the crew of the "Betty," 
who, moved by remorse, now declared that Ireson had, 
indeed, sailed by the sinking vessel, but not before he 
had commanded and even implored his men to go to 
the rescue. They had refused to listen, demanding 
instead that the "Betty" should be hastened home, 
where later, to hide their own cowardice, they had 
falsely laid the blame upon Ireson, who silently suffered 
the injustice and shame, hoping that at the cost of his 

04 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

own he might keep clean the honorable name of his 
town. And so the truth finally came out that the ven- 
geance of the community had been vented on an inno- 
cent man. Marblehead from that day to this has re- 
vered Ireson's memory as that of a martyr. Wliittier's 
ballad contains hardly a particle of literal truth, but 
that was not the wilful fault of the poet, who founded 
his verse on a fragment of rhyme he had from an early 
schoolmate, a native of Marblehead. 

The loiterer along the Essex shore orders his affairs 
wisely if, when leaving Marblehead behind him, he 
chooses the water route to Salem, for the history of the 
latter, after Plymouth oldest of New England towns, 
has had to do at every turn with the deeds and daring 
of those who go down to the deep in ships, while the 
tales Salem folk tell the stranger deal most often with 
the glory of their town In the days when the sea gates 
of the Orient opened wide to her venturesome captains, 
and the sovereignty of Massachusetts here first took 
form in her greatest seaport. Not all of Salem's 
memories of a splendid past, however, have to do with 
men and things of the sea. A house numbered 14 
Lynde Street was the home of Rufus Choate in the 
morning of his brilliant career as an advocate, and at 

65 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

26 Winter Street, a broad, elm-shaded thoroughfare, 
stands the many-roomed brick mansion built by Justice 
Joseph Story, and in which his son, William W^etmore 
Story, poet and sculptor, entered life. William H. 
Prescott, the historian, was also a native of Salem, 
Plummer Hall at 134 Essex Street now covering the site 
of the house in Avhich he was born. 

Charles T. Brooks, preacher, poet, scholar and stout 
apostle of freedom in the days that tried men's souls, 
was born at the corner of Bridge and Arabella Streets, 
Salem, and the house numbered 312 Essex Street, a 
wooden structure dating from the colonial period, was 
the long-time home of Maria Susanna Cummins, whose 
career affords material for one of the most romantic 
chapters in our literary annals. She was the daughter 
of a Salem lawyer and judge, and expected to make 
teaching her life work; but the literary impulse pos- 
sessed her, and after a brief apprenticeship in writing, 
she published in 1854, at the age of twenty-four, her 
first sustained effort in fiction. This was "The Lamp- 
lighter," a touching love story deeply inspired with re- 
ligious sentiment, which speedily proved, in the matter 
of sales, the most successful novel written in America 

up to that time. Indeed, though the work of an un- 

60 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

known hand, it won instant and abounding popularity. 
Forty thousand copies of the book were sold within two 
months, and before a year's end it had found its way 
into almost every American household, besides being 
many times republished in other lands. And it has 
stood the test of time, for although half a century has 
elapsed since it first came from the press, it still has a 
steady sale, and is to be found on the shelves of any 
well kept book-shop. Miss Cummins aften^^ard wrote 
and published half a dozen other novels, but none of 
them attained the success of "The Lamplighter." She 
died at the early age of thirty-nine. 

Another worthy of old Salem was the Reverend 
William Bentley,who lived and died in the house num- 
bered 106 Essex Street. Dr. Bentley was for thirty- 
six years the militant pastor of the East Church in 
Salem, but he was also much more than a preacher of 
God's word, his labors in varied fields proving him one 
of the most remarkable men who played a part in affairs 
during the formative period of the republic. An un- 
tiring seeker after knowledge, and a worker who never 
knew weariness, it is related of him that, besides pre- 
paring two sermons every week to the number of more 
than three thousand, he found time to write upward of 

67 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

three score works, including observations on theology, 
astronomy, geology, and other natural sciences, and to 
perfect himself in a knowledge of twenty-one languages. 
Nor did these labors tax to the full his capacity for work. 
He also made leisure to correspond with scholars abroad 
and to write regularly, first for the *' Essex Gazette " and 
later for the "Salem Register," a weekly review of cur- 
rent events, besides many hundreds of political editori- 
als from the point of view of a sturdy supporter of the 
Republican or then Jeffersonian party. 

President Jefferson was keenly alive to the value of 
the services of the Salem pastor, and tendered him an 
important position in reward for them, but he hastened 
to decline it, being wholly contented with his quiet life- 
work in Salem. Tradition paints Dr. Bentley as a man 
of short stature and rotund figure, and of piquant and 
original ways, whereof more than one amusing anec- 
dote is, after the lapse of many years, still current in the 
town he helped to make famous. When, on a Sunday 
morning in 1814, the frigate " Constitution " was driven 
into Marblehead harbor by a British fleet, Dr. Bentley 
was conducting services in the pulpit. Word being 
brought into the church that the ship was in danger, 
he announced that they could worship God at all times, 

68 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

but could save the " Constitution " only at the present 
hour; whereupon, suiting the deed to the word, he 
doffed his gown, descended from the pulpit, and hurry- 
ing to Marblehead, with half of his congregation at his 
heels, requested to be placed in command of one of the 
guns of Fort Sewall. The danger at an end, he re- 
appeared in his pulpit in time for the afternoon service, 
and preached an impromptu sermon from the text, 
" There go the ships." Dr. Bentley died in 1819 at the 
age of sixty, and in Harmony Grove cemetery, Salem, 
takes the rest he so fairly earned. 

A New England town of the last century alone could 
have produced two such widely different and opposing 
personalities as William Bentley and Jones Very, the 
poet and mystic, who was born in Salem, and here 
passed most of the years of his gentle life. It has been 
truthfully said of Very by one who knew him well that 
America has brought forth no other man like him. 
Born in 1813, the son of a sea captain, he made, when a 
boy, one voyage with his father. His tastes, however, 
were wholly literary, and upon his father's death, de- 
voting himself to teaching to support the family, he 
fitted himself for Harvard, and was graduated with high 
honors. Appointed tutor in Greek, he studied for the 

69 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

ministry in the Divinity School, but falHng into a con- 
dition of religious exaltation, he was removed for treat- 
ment, and upon his recovery returning to Salem, he 
there passed the remainder of his days, living always 
in a peculiarly rapt and religious state. 

Very was persuaded that to renounce self absolutely 
was to be absorbed in Christ, and to become the voice 
of the Holy Ghost. With him, writes the friend already 
quoted, "success or failure was a thing of little conse- 
quence, for that was in the hands of the Lord. His 
only concern was to be led by God in all things, great 
and small, and this he believed he did, and that others 
might also do it, if they would. He came and went, 
spoke or was silent, as the Spirit directed him. He was 
led by the Spirit in all things. Entire submission and 
absolute dependence constituted his whole religious 
life, and his religious made the whole of his actual life." 
The thoughts and deeds thus shaped found expression 
in a l^ody of verse, gathered into a goodly volume after 
his death in 1880, which by its spiritual delicacy and 
simple grace, its deep beauty and natural melody as- 
sures to its author a permanent place in the great 
Temple of Song. Very was born in a dwelling yet 
standing at the corner of Boston and Essex Streets, but 

70 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

he lived for many years and died in a quaint little house 
numbered 154 Federal Street. 

None of the Salem landmarks thus far pointed out, 
however, has the deep and abiding interest that at- 
taches to those associated with the life and labors of 
Hawthorne. The great romancer's memory, indeed, 
seems closest to a living presence in Salem. He was 
born in the town; it was, in the main, the scene of such 
of his early tales as pretend to any definite location; 
there he met and wooed the woman who became his 
wife and the mother of his children ; there " The Scarlet 
Letter" was written, and there was reared "The House 
of the Seven Gables"; and finally, at the close of his 
career, he returned to Salem to find the scene of " Doc- 
tor Grimshaw's Secret." Thus every corner of the 
town makes moving, if silent, appeal to the lover of 
Hawthorne and his work. 

First of all, one finds at 27 Union Street, set down 
amid surroundings which must always have been dull 
and are now wholly squalid, the house in which on In- 
dependence Day, 1804, Hawthorne entered life. This 
house, built as early as 1700 and bought by his grand- 
father in 1772, is an eight-roomed wooden structure, 

with a gambrel roof, a single large chimney, and front 

71 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



flush with the sidewalk. Save for a modern front door, 
it is in substantially the same condition as when Haw- 
thorne was born in a room on the second floor, and it 
promises, unless accidents befall, to survive the century. 
It is now occupied by a Salem mechanic, whose wife, 
a woman with a mind and will of her own, resolutely 
denied the writer a glimpse of the interior. 

The loss, however, was not a serious one. Haw- 
thorne's father, a shipmaster, as many of his forbears 
had been before him, died of fever in a foreign port 
when the son was four years old; and a little later the 
widow moved to the roomy, three-storied house, num- 
bered 12 Herbert Street, which, now become a mean 
appearing tenement, was then owned and partly occu- 
pied by her father, Richard Manning. Thereafter, 
much of Hawthorne's boyhood was passed in this house, 
and it thus played a far more important part in his life 
than did the one in. Union Street. It remained his 
home until he was fourteen years old, when his family 
removed for a time to Maine, and upon leaving Bow- 
doin in 1825 he came back to dwell in it with his mother 
and sisters. The Hawthornes resided at what is now 
26 Dearborn Street, North Salem, from 1828 to 1832, 
but then returned to the Herbert Street homestead, 

n 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

where until 1839 the Hfe of the son and brother was, 
by choice, one of self-communion and solitude. " I had 
always a natural tendency towards seclusion," he 
writes, " and this I now indulged to the utmost, so that 
for months together I scarcely had human intercourse 
outside my own family, seldom going out except at 
twilight, or only to take the nearest way to the most 
convenient solitude, which was oftenest the seashore. 
I had few acquaintances in Salem, and during the years 
I spent there, I doubt whether so much as twenty 
people in the town were aware of my existence." 

Hawthorne's kinsman and biographer contributes 
some additional touches to this slight picture. "He 
had little communication," writes Lathrop, " with even 
the members of his family. Frequently his meals 
were brought and left at his locked door, and it was 
not often that the inmates of the old Herbert Street 
mansion met in family circle." Lathrop adds that the 
young recluse never read his stories aloud to his mother 
and sisters, and that his only pastimes were long walks 
in the dusky hours along the coast, or about the sleeping 
streets of Salem. During these years of self-imposed 
solitude Hawthorne was, to quote his own words, " the 
obscurest man of letters in America." He had under- 

73 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

taken on leaving college to live by his pen, but small 
success attended his 'prentice efforts. His first novel, 
a short romance entitled " Fanshawe, " was issued with- 
out his name but at his expense in 1828, and the author 
so repented of his venture that he subsequently called 
in all the copies that he could and destroyed them. 
After that he produced a group of short stories bearing 
title "Seven Tales of My Native Land," which never 
saw the light, for at last, in a fit of irritation and despair 
at liis luckless efforts to get it published, the young 
author burned the manuscript. 

Success, however, came to him in the end, for when 
he wrote other stories they one by one gained admission 
into the magazines and annuals of the day. Some of 
these were collected and published in 1837 in the first 
volume of the "Twice-Told Tales," and others after- 
ward found place in a second volume having the same 
title, and in the "Snow Image." When once these 
volumes obtained recognition, their author could not 
complain that his countrymen failed to be solidly proud 
of hira. The sketches collected in the "Twice-Told 
Talcs" and the "Snow Image," along with the earlier 
portions of what now comprise the "x\merican Note- 
Books, " were for the most part written in the Herbert 

74 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 



Street house, the author's study being a room on the 
second floor under the eaves, looking out on the busi- 
ness of the wharf -streets. "In this dismal chamber 
fame was won," Hawthorne wrote in 1836. "Here I 
sit," he recorded in his diary four years later, "in my 
old accustomed chamber where I used to sit in days 
gone by. Thousands of visions have appeared to me 
in it; and some few of them have become visible to the 
world. If ever I should have a biographer he ought to 
make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, 
because so much of my lonely youth was wasted here, 
and here my mind and character were formed, and here 
I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been 
despondent. And here I sat for a long, long time wait- 
ing patiently for the world to know me, and sometimes 
wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether 
it would ever know me at all — at least until I were in 
my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were al- 
ready in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled 
and benumbed. But oftener I was happy, at least as 
happy as I then knew how to be, or was aware of the 
possibility of being. By and by, the world found me 
out in my lonely chamber, and called me forth, not, 
indeed, with a loud roar of acclamation, but rather 

75 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

with a still, small voice, and forth I went but found 
nothing in the world that I thought preferable to my old 
solitude till now. And now I begin to understand why 
I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, 
and why I could never break through the viewless bolts 
and bars; for if I had sooner made my escape into the 
world, I should have grown hard and rough, and have 
been covered with earthly dust, and my heart might 
have become callous by rude encounter with the multi- 
tude. But living in solitude till the fullness of time 
was come, I still kept the dew of my youth and the 
freshness of my heart." 

When this passage was written, Hawthorne had been 
for some time a weigher and ganger in the Boston cus- 
tom house. A year later he quit office-holding to take 
up his abode at Brook Farm, and after that came his 
jBrst sojourn in Concord, but in 1845 he returned to his 
native town, where with his wife he shared his mother's 
house, and where early in 1846 word came to him that 
Franklin Pierce and other friends had secured for him 
the post of surveyor of the port of Salem. Time has 
wrought small change in the two-storied brick building 
fronting on Derby Street in which during the next three 
years the author passed his working hours. The en- 

76 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

trance is reached by a flight of wide granite steps, and 
over it towers as of old the enormous American eagle, 
with bolts and arrows in each of its heavily gilded claws, 
described in the prologue to "The Scarlet Letter." 

The inquiring visitor, and his name is legion, is 
shown the stencil with which Ha^\i:horne marked in- 
spected goods, together with the desk at which he sat 
and the room in which he worked, but one seeks in 
vain for the rows of venerable figures sitting in old- 
fashioned chairs — the decrepit sea captains, sketched 
with so much spirit and such exquisite humor in the 
opening pages of his greatest book. Time has taken 
the last of them, and they come no more to visit their 
erst-while haunts at the end of Derby wharf. Haw- 
thorne, it is to be feared, failed to do these old sea 
rovers full justice. They were, at their best, the mighty 
men of a splendid era. They carried the American 
flag to remote lands, where, until their coming, it had 
been an unknown ensign, and they made their native 
Salem one of the great seaports of the world. But 
their glory was fleeting. Salem's commercial impor- 
tance, even in Hawthorne's time, was dwindling into 
insignificance, and its custom house had already be- 
come a forlorn, vacant-looking place. Time has only 

77 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

served to accentuate its forlornness, so that the impres- 
sion the writer brought away from it was a dreary and 
depressing one; and yet it is the scene of one of the 
finest bits of writing in our language — proof of the 
power of genius to turn base metal into pure gold. 

Hawthorne, soon after he became surveyor of the 
port of Salem, removed from the old home on Herbert 
Street to the house numbered 18 Chestnut Street, then 
as now the fashionable thoroughfare of the town. His 
residence there, however, was a brief one, for in 1847 
he moved again, this time to 14 Mall Street, where he 
occupied a three-storied house, surrounded by trees 
and shrubbery, which, though now more than a century 
old, is still in excellent preservation. It was to this 
house that he came on a June day in 1849 to tell his 
wife that he "had been turned out of office headlong" 
through the trickery and betrayal of professing friends ; 
and it was in an upper room of the same house that, 
cheered by his wife's enthusiastic belief in his powers, 
he sat down a few days later to write "The Scarlet 
Letter." He had saved nothing from his salary as 
surveyor, and but for the forethought of his wife in lay- 
ing aside part of the money given her for household 
expenses, they would have been penniless. As it was, 

78 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

sickness and the death of Hawthorne's mother soon 
swept away these small savings, and they were only 
rescued from the edge of actual want by a timely and 
generous contribution from friends. 

Such were the conditions under which Hawthorne 
completed his masterpiece. " I finished my book only 
yesterday," he wrote in February, 1850, to his friend 
Bridge, "one end being in the press at Boston, while 
the other was in my head here in Salem ; so that, as you 
see, my story is at least fourteen miles long . . . My 
book, the publisher tells me, will not be out before 
April. He speaks of it in tremendous terms of appro- 
bation; so does Mrs. Hawthorne, to whom I read the 
conclusion last night. It broke her heart and sent her 
to bed with a grievous headache — which I look upon 
as a triumphant success. Judging from the effect upon 
her and the publisher, I may calculate on what bowlers 
call a tenstroke. But I don't make any such calcu- 
lation." He did not calculate aright. "The Scarlet 
Letter" was issued in a first edition of five thousand 
copies; a second edition followed at once, and its au- 
thor's fame was at last established. 

After visits to Union and Herbert Streets, to the cus- 
tom house and to Mall Street, the lover of Hawthorne, 

79 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

set down in Salem, is sure to seek the location of the 
*' House of Seven Gables," where that grim spinster, 
Miss Hephzibah Pyncheon, opened her shop and kept 
her pathetic, solitary vigil; but ere his quest is ended 
he will find to his regret that the Pyncheon house never 
had existence in wood and plaster, and is to be considered 
only as a type of the houses built in Salem in the latter 
half of the seventeenth century. "These edifices," 
says Hawthorne himself, "were built in generally ac- 
cordant style, though with such subordinate variety as 
keeps the beholder's curiosity excited and causes each 
structure, like its owner's character, to produce its own 
peculiar impression." 

An old house a,t 54 Turner Street, however, is often 
referred to as the "House of Seven Gables," and 
toward it, upon leaving Mall Street, the writer made his 
way. The structure in question, built about 1662, was 
for many years the property of the Ingersoll family, 
relatives of Hawthorne, who was often their guest. 
Tradition has it that on one of his visits Miss Ingersoll 
told him that the house had once had seven gables, and 
taking him to the attic showed him the beams and mor- 
tises to prove her statement. Coming down the stair- 
way Hawthorne is said to have repeated, half aloud, 

80 



THE SALEM OF HAWTHORNE 

"The house of seven gables. That sounds well," and 
soon after the romance bearing that title appeared. 
"The Tales of Grandfather's Chair" are also reputed 
to have had their origin in the Turner Street house. 
Hawthorne on one of his visits tliere complained that 
he Avas written out and could think of nothing more. 
Turning to him and pointing to an old armchair that 
had long been in the family. Miss Ingersoll said : " Why 
don't you write about this old chair ? There must be 
many stories connected with it." The suggestion 
proved a happy one, and from this incident the charm- 
ing volume published In 1841 is said to have come. It 
was, moreover, a member of the Ingersoll family who 
told Hawthorne the story which, given by him to 
Longfellow, finally took form in "Evangeline." 

Though the many-gabled home of the Pyncheons 
may never have had material form and being, there can 
be no doubt that an old house at 53 Charter Street, 
Salem, at the corner of an ancient burial-ground, was 
in Hawthorne's thought when he created an abode for 
Doctor Grimshawe, and those Elfland children, Elsie 
and Ned. His description applies well enough to the 
Charter Street house as the writer found it. "Doctor 
Grimshawe 's residence," he tells us, "cornered on a 

81 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

graveyard, with which the house communicated by a 
back door. It did not appear to be an ancient struc- 
ture, nor one that ever would have been the abode of a 
very wealthy or prominent family — a three-storied 
house, perhaps a century old, low-studded, with a 
square front, standing right upon the street; and a small 
inclosed porch, containing the main entrance, affording 
a glimpse up and down the street through an oval 
window on each side. Its characteristic was decent re- 
spectability, not sinking below the boundary of the gen- 
teel. ... A sufficient number of rooms and chambers, 
low, ill-lighted, ugly, but not misusceptible of warmth 
and comfort, the sunniest and cheerfulest of which 
were on the side that looked into the graveyard." 
Dreary the old Charter Street house undeniably is, but 
for the Hawthorne pilgrim it has much more than an 
imaginative interest; it was once occupied by the father 
of Mrs. Hawthorne, and within its walls the author 
wooed and Avon his wife. 

There is no sweeter love story than that of Nathaniel 
Hawthorne and Sophia Peabody as they themselves 
have told it in their diaries and letters. He was thirty- 
three, she twenty-six, when fate brought them together, 
made them lovers and put an end for good and all to 

8£ 



THE SALim OF II A V\ T II () R \ K 

the solitary, chilling life he had led for so many years. 
There was a weary period of waiting between their 
meeting and their marriage, for she was an invalid and 
his worldly success had been slight, but stout hearts 
make true lovers, and in the end all obstacles to a union 
were swept from their path. And to the husband that 
union meant, far more than to most men, the begin- 
ning of a new existence, for his was not a youth's but a 
man's love, filling and quickening his whole nature. 
" Sometimes, during my solitary life in our old Salem 
house, " he once wrote her, while yet they were plighted 
lovers and he had gone out into the world to become a 
home-builder, " it seemed to me as if I had only life 
enough to know that I was alive; for I had no wife then 
to keep my heart warm. But, at length, you were re- 
vealed to me. I drew nearer and nearer to you, and 
opened my heart to you, and you came to me, and will 
remain forever, keeping my heart warm, and renewing 
my life with your own. You only have taught me that 
I have a heart, you only have thrown a light, deep 
downward and upward, into my soul. You only have 
revealed me to myself; for without your aid my best 
knowledge of myself would have l)cen merely to know 
my own shadow, to watch it flickering on the wall, 

83 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

and mistake its fantasies for my own real actions. I 
walked many years in darkness, and might so have 
walked through life, with only a dreamy notion that 
there "was any light in the universe, if you had not kissed 
my eyelids and given me to see." One cannot doubt 
that these words came from the depths of the writer's 
being, or that save for his wife and her love his genius 
never would have found full and perfect expression. 
Lovers they were from the first and lovers they re- 
mained to the end. 

Hawthorne took farewell of Salem soon after "The 
Scarlet Letter " was given to the world. He never again 
had his home there, and those who would visit his grave 
must travel many miles from the town made immortal 
by his pen. 



Chapter IV 

Emerson and Others in Concord 

Whex Hawthorne married in the summer of 1842 
he and his wife went to Concord to hve in the quaint, 
gambrel-roofed house which he was to make famous as 
the "Old Manse." The present-day pilgrim follow- 
ing in their footsteps finds the quiet hamlet, perhaps, 
the most interesting of New World towns ; and dowered 
also with a quiet beauty of its own. Though it lies on 
level ground, those who dwell there have always an up- 
lifting vision of the distant summits of Monadnock and 
Wachusett; fine old woods and noble elms lend dignity 
and charm to its open spaces; around and about it 
beautiful ponds smile at one from their clear basins, 
while through the green meadows lazily flows the gentle 
Musketaquid, to give the Concord its Indian name, on 
its way to join the more restless Assabet and finally, 
after passing by and through other towns, to lose itself 
in the broader Merrimac. The old hamlet, moreover, 
has played a part in history that makes it dear to 
every student of his country's past. Founded in 

85 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

1635 by stout Peter Bulkeley, preacher, Puritan and 
pioneer in one, it sent its sons to fight in all of the 
colonial wars, and when the greater struggle for inde- 
pendence broke, it was on Concord soil and by the 
banks of the Musketaquid that " the embattled farmers 
stood, and fired the shot heard round the world." 

Another century made it the home of Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, and it is his memory and influence that are 
now most potent to draw pilgrims to the old town. 
The visitor to Concord, for the same reason, is sure to 
go first to the house in which Emerson dwelt when, at 
the age of thirty-one, he became a resident of the town 
of his forefathers, and the place destined to be his own 
home for life. This house, which stands close to the 
scene of the fight on the banks of the river, was built 
for the Reverend William Emerson, the grandfather 
of Ralph Waldo and pastor of the church at Concord 
at the opening of the Revolution. An ardent patriot, 
the Reverend William Emerson in 1776 hastened to 
join the army at Ticonderoga, but fell ill of fever and 
died on his way back to Concord. Four years later 
his widow, who had come as a bride to the Old Manse, 
when it was a new and fine house, married Dr. Ezra 
Ripley, his successor in the Concord parish. 

86 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

The father of Ralph Waldo was the son and name- 
sake of the Reverend William Emerson. After his 
death in 1811 the Concord parsonage became a second 
home to his children, their own continuing in Boston 
and Cambridge until 1834, when, upon his return from 
his first visit to England, Ralph Waldo, with his mother, 
took up his abode permanently in Concord. He lived 
for a year or so at the Old Manse with Dr. Ripley, and 
there the greater part of his first book, "Nature," was 
written in the same room where, some years later, 
Hawthorne began "^Mosses from an Old Manse." 
His residence there ended in the latter part of 1835, 
when, following his marriage to Miss Lidian Jackson, 
of Plymouth, he took possession of his own home on 
the Lexington road, east of the village, and not far from 
the Walden woods. There, save for his lecture tours 
and an occasional \nsit to Europe, he lived until his 
death. The house was partially burned in July, 1872, 
but was rebuilt in its former shape and aspect. A 
plain, square, wooden structure, not without an air of 
comfort and quiet dignity, it stands now, as in Emer- 
son's time, among trees, with a pine grove across the 
way, and an orchard and garden reaching to a brook in 
the rear, while on the southeast the outlook is toward 

87 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

another and larger orchard, where, until decay com- 
pelled its removal, stood the summer-house built for 
Emerson in 1848 by his friend, Amos Bronson Alcott. 

Three years after Emerson took up his residence on 
the Lexington road he described his mode of life there 
in a letter to Carlyle. "I occupy," he wrote, "two 
acres only of God's earth; on which is my house, my 
kitchen-garden, my orchard of thirty young trees, my 
empty barn. My house is a very good one for comfort, 
and abounding in room. Besides my house, I have, I 
believe, $22,000, whose income in ordinary years is six 
per cent. I have no other tithe or glebe except the in- 
come of my winter lectures, which was last winter $800. 
Well, with this income, here at home, I am a rich man. 
I stay at home and go abroad at my own instance. I 
have food, warmth, leisure, books, friends. Go away 
from home I am rich no longer, I never have a dollar 
to spend on a fancy. As no wise man, I suppose, ever 
was rich in the sense of freedom to spend, because of 
the inundation of claims, so neither am I, who am not 
wise. But at home, I am rich — rich enough for ten 
brothers. My wife Lidian is an incarnation of Chris- 
tianity, I call her Asia, and keeps my philosophy from 
Antinomianism; my mother, whitest, mildest, most 

88 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

conservative of ladies, whose only exeeption to her uni- 
versal preference for old things is her son; my boy, a 
piece of love and sunshine, well worth my watching 
from morning to night; — these and three domestic 
women, who cook, and sew and run for us, make all 
my household. Here I sit and read and write, with 
very little system, and, as far as regards composition, 
with the most fragmentary result: paragraphs incom- 
pressible, each sentence an infinitely repellent particle." 
Emerson's scant two acres grew with the years. " In 
one of my solitary wood- walks by Walden Pond," he 
wrote to his brother in 1844, "I met two or three men 
who told me they had come there to sell and to buy a 
field, on which they wished me to bid as purchaser. As 
it was on the shore of the pond, and now for years I had 
a sort of daily occupancy in it, I bought it — eleven 
acres, for ten dollars an acre. The next day I carried 
some of my well-beloved gossips to the place, and they 
deciding that the field was not good for anything if 
Hart well Bigelow should cut down his pine grove, I 
bougiit for $125 more his pretty wood lot of three or 
four acres; and am now landlord and water-lord of 
fourteen acres, more or less, on the shore of Walden, 
and can raise my own blackberries." This "field," 

89 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

on the north shore of the pond, now become a grove 
which hides all but a glimpse of the water from the 
visitor, and a large tract of woodland on the south shore 
of which he later became the owner, were most often 
the objective points of the daily walk which Emerson 
for many years took either alone or in the company of 
some kindred spirit. 

But his afternoon path, after the morning's labor in 
his library, did not always lead to the shores of Walden. 
Hawthorne's note-book records that in August, 1842, 
while returning through the woods from Emerson's 
house to the Old Manse, he came upon Margaret Fuller 
reading under a tree in Sleepy Hollow — the little park 
that has since become a cemetery. As they sat talking 
on the hill-side, "we heard," he writes, "footsteps on 
the high bank above us, and while the person was still 
hidden among the trees he called to Margaret. Then 
he emerged from his green shade, and behold! it was 
Mr. Emerson, who said 'there were muses in the woods 
today, and whispers to be heard in the breezes.' It 
being now nearly six we separated — Mr. Emerson 
and Margaret toward his home, and I toward mine." 

Though Emerson hitched his wagon to a star, he 
kept his feet firmly planted on Concord soil, and the 

90 



EMKRSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

memory of him that abides among his former towns- 
men is that of one who took an active and healthy in- 
terest in the every-day Hfe around him. His son re- 
cords that he often went to town meetings, and though 
seldom heard in discussion came home "to praise the 
eloquence and strong good sense of his neighbors." 
He liked, the same authority tells us, to converse with 
horsemen and stage-drivers, "enjoying their racy ver- 
nacular and picturesque brag"; and he relished a chat 
with the fishermen, wood-choppers and cattle drovers 
whom he often encountered on his walks. There is 
little doubt, as Holmes has suggested, that Emerson's 
familiar intercourse with men of sense who had no pre- 
tensions to learning, and in whom, for that very reason, 
the native sap of thought came out with less disguise 
in its expression, bred that respect for mother-wit and 
for every wholesome human quality which runs, a 
thread of gold, through all his writings. 

The other and better known side of Emerson's life in 
Concord had to do with his labors as lecturer and editor, 
and with the composition of the long series of volumes 
in prose and verse which won their author full meed of 
fame. The years as they waxed and waned brought to 
the house on the Lexington road a growing company 

91 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

of choice spirits, who, headed by Margaret Fuller, 
hailed their host as a leavening influence in the thought 
and life of the time. There, also, great sorrows came 
to Emerson, death taking from him his mother, his 
brothers and the little son whose memory lives in the 
tenderest of his poems, the "Threnody." There, 
finally, old age crept upon him, an old age, alas ! made 
infinitely pathetic by loss of memory and failing mental 
power. Howells has pictured him, the shadow of his 
former self, standing on a March day in 1882 before 
Longfellow's bier and saying to those about him: "The 
gentleman we have just been burying was a sweet and 
beautiful soul; but I forget his name." A little more 
than a month later his own flickering light went out. 
Emerson had dwelt for seven years in Concord when, 
as before stated, Hawthorne came to live in the Old 
Manse. A charming passage in the "American Note 
Books" describes the delight the romancer and his wife 
found in renovating the old house, which, at the time 
of their going into it, was given up to ghosts and cob- 
webs. "The shade of our departed host," he writes 
of the little drawing-room, "will never haunt it, for its 
aspect has been as completely changed as the scenery 
of a theatre. Probably the ghost gave a peep into it, 

92 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

uttered a groan, and vanished forever." This ghost, 
as we know, was Dr. Ezra Ripley, the learned and pious 
minister who for more than three score years ruled his 
parish with unfailing skill and authority, and whose 
memory still lives on in Concord, green almost as on the 
day when he died. The Old Manse has undergone 
little outward change since Dr. Ripley and the Haw- 
thomes lived in it. but it now has more neighbors than 
in the old days; the historic bridge, across which the 
Concord fight took place, has a successor built after an 
elaborately rustic design, and on the western bank 
stands French's virile statue of the Minute Man. 

The granite obelisk reared long ago in memory of 
the conflict still uplifts itself on the opposite shore, and 
the wall on the left encases a stone bearing an inscrip- 
tion which recalls the fate of two unnamed British 
soldiers whom their foemen buried at this spot. Haw- 
thorne in the introduction to the "Mosses" makes 
characteristic reference to their grave and to the grisly 
story told liim by Lowell of the farmer boy who put an 
end to the life of one of them. "Tradition says that 
the lad now left his task" — he had been chopping 
wood — "and hurried to the battle-field with the axe 
still in his hand. The British had by this time retreated, 

93 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

the Americans were in pursuit; and the late scene of 
strife was thus deserted by both parties. Two soldiers 
lay on the ground. One was a corpse; but as the young 
New Englander drew nigh, the other Briton raised 
himself painfully on his hands and knees, and gave a 
ghastly stare into his face. The boy — it must have 
been a nervous impulse, without purpose, without 
thought, and betokening a sensitive and impressionable 
nature rather than a hardened one — the boy uplifted 
his axe and dealt the wounded soldier a fierce and fatal 
blow upon the head. . . . The story comes home to 
me like a truth. Often-times, as an intellectual and 
moral exercise, I have sought to follow that poor youth 
through his subsequent career, and observed how his 
soul was tortured by the blood-stain, contracted as it 
had been before the long custom of war had robbed 
human life of its sanctity, and while it seemed murderous 
to slay a brother man. This one circumstance has 
borne more fruit for me than all that history tells us of 
the fight." 

Though compelled to contend the wliile with a 
poverty that often pinched him sorely, the three years 
Hawthorne passed with his bride in the Old Manse were 
the happiest of his life, and he wrote of them that he had 

94 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

never lived so like a boy since he really was a boy in the 
old days in Maine. They were also among the most 
fruitful of his literary career, for during this period he 
wrote many of the sketches afterward included in the 
second series of "Twice Told Tales," edited the 
"Journals of an African Cruiser," by his friend Bridge, 
and laid the foundation for "Mosses." When not 
busy with his pen, he labored in his garden, rambled 
over the fields and into the woods or paddled on the 
river, most often alone, but now and then with Thoreau 
or Ellery Channing for a comrade. 

Emerson came also to talk and walk with him, but 
theirs was the attraction of oppositcs. Emerson, we 
are told, never could read Hawthorne's tales, then or 
afterwards, while Hawthorne held steadily aloof from 
the lengthening throng of strangers for whom Emer- 
son's home had already become a Mecca. "Young 
visionaries," Hawthorne wrote of this diverse and curi- 
ous procession, "to whom just as much of insight had 
been imparted as to make life all a labyrinth around 
them, came to seek the clew that should lead them out 
of their self-involved bewilderment. Gray-headed 
theorists — whose systems, at first air, had imprisoned 
them In an iron frame- work — traveled painfully to his 

95 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTE_RS 

door, not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit 
into their own thraldom. People that had lighted on a 
new thought, or a thought that they fancied new, came 
to Emerson, as the finder of a glittering giem hastens to 
a lapidary to ascertain its value. For myself, there had 
been epochs in my life when I, too, might have asked 
of the prophet the master-word that should solve me 
the riddle of the universe; but now, being happy, I felt 
as if there was no question to be put, and therefore 
admired Emerson as a poet of deep beauty and austere 
tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a philoso- 
pher. It was good, nevertheless," he adds, "to meet 
him in the wood-paths, or sometimes in our avenue, 
with that pure, intellectual gleam diffused about his 
presence like the garment of a shining one; and he, so 
quiet, so simple, so without pretension, encountering 
each man alive as if expecting to receive more than he 
could impart. And, in truth, the heart of many an 
ordinary man had, perchance, inscriptions which he 
could not read." 

Hawthorne, in 1846, left the Old Manse and Concord 
on his way to the surveyorship of the port of Salem, but 
he returned at the end of six years to again make his 
home in the town, purchasing a property on the Lexing- 

90 



E M E R S O N A X D OTHERS I N C O N C O R D 

ton road which had been owned by Amos Bronson 
Alcott. This property consisted of a house, seven 
acres of meadow, and about twice as much woodland, 
including a hill at the back of the dwelling. Its whilom 
owner had built up the hillside in terraces and planted 
it with apple-trees, and to these Hawthorne added a 
great number of Norway spruces and firs, which, set 
out along the walks and on the slope of the hill, are 
now grown so large and dense as to quite overshadow 
the place. The house, standing close to the road, to 
which Hawthorne gave the name of The Wayside, has 
changed little in external appearance since he lived in 
it. Built before the Revolution, the nucleus of the 
present structure was small and simple, consisting of 
only four or five modest rooms and an attic. Haw- 
thorne, in the course of time, added a second story 
and a garret to the western wing, and built on three 
rooms, one on top of the other, forming a tower, in the 
topmost chamber of which he had his study and did 
most of the literary work of the closing period of his life. 
During his occupancy of the The Wayside, as in 
earlier years, Hawthorne spent much of his time in the 
open air. His favorite walk was along the brow of the 
hill in the rear of the house. Now as then this summit 

97 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

is covered with a thick and tangled growth of oak, 
birch and pine, with brambles and moss underfoot, but 
the path made by his footsteps, as he used to pace to 
and fro in the late afternoon of pleasant days, can still 
be traced along the level brow of the declivity. "His 
wife used often to ascend the hill with him," writes their 
son, "and they would loiter about there together, or 
sit down on the wooden benches that had been set up 
beneath the large pines, or at points here and there 
whence glimpses of the vale were to be had. At other 
times they would stroll down the larch path to the brook, 
where was a pleasant gurgle of water, and a graceful 
dip and shadow of willows, and the warble of bobolinks 
and blackbirds. They were as constantly together 
during the last years as during the first of their married 
life; and they talked much to each other in the low, 
sympathetic tones that were characteristic of them. 
But what they said can never be known. They were 
always happy in each other, and serene." 

Hawthorne's first occupancy of The Wayside was a 
brief one. His old friend Pierce became President, in 
March, 1853, and a few weeks later he was nominated 
and confirmed consul to Liverpool. When, in the 
summer of 1860, he came again to Concord, he had 

98 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

only four years of life before him. To these belong 
the writing of "Our Old Home," the first draught of 
"Septimius Felton," and the commencement of "The 
DoUiver Romance" and " Doctor Grimshawe's Secret." 
The last three were never finished. An enfeebling ill- 
ness seized their author in the spring of 1864, and when 
ex-President Pierce proposed to him that they should 
make a little tour together among the mountains of 
New Hampshire, Hawthorne consented, in the hope 
of getting some profit from the change of air. But he 
was not to go far. He only reached a small place called 
Ph-mouth, when, on May 18, 1864, death overtook 
him. His companion, going into the room in the early 
morning, found that during the night he had passed 
away in his sleep. His body was brought to Concord 
for burial; and on the day of his funeral the manuscript 
of the unfinished "Romance," the last literary work 
on which he had been engaged, was laid on his coffin. 
The Wayside is now the home of Harriet Mulford 
Lothrop, who under the pen name of " Margaret Sid- 
ney " has put forth many books for children. 

It is not Emerson or Hawthorne, but Henry David 
Thoreau of whom one hears most in the Concord of 

today. The Thoreau House is the best hotel in the 

99 

L ofC. 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

village; there is some reminder of the hermit in almost 
every little shop, and one tradesman has invested in 
plates and inkstands and paper-cutters of Delft ware 
bearing pictures of his Walden hut or the cairn of stones 
that now mark the spot where the hut once stood. 
Though the visitor may marvel at it there is reason for 
Concord's interest in Thoreau, for of all the authors 
who helped to make it famous he was the only one born 
in the town — the only one Avholly native to the soil. 
The modest house in which he entered life on a July 
day in 1817 has been removed from its original site 
and stands now on a by-path from Concord to Lexing- 
ton, a little less than a mile from his grave in the village 
cemetery. Thoreau 's parents left Concord when he 
was still a child in arms, but in 1823 returned to the 
town, which, save for his years in college and for brief 
and infrequent absences, remained the son's home 
during the remainder of his life. 

Thoreau 's grandfather, John Thoreau, was born in 
the Isle of Guernsey, was a merchant in Boston, and 
died in Concord in the opening year of the last century. 
His father, also named John, was also a merchant, and 
at last a pencil-maker, an occupation which the son 
followed at intervals. Henry was the third of four 

100 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

children, all of rare mental and moral endowment. 
His elder brother John and his sister Helen were 
teachers, and it was a part of the latter 's earnings that 
helped pay Henry's expenses at Harvard. He was 
graduated from that institution in 1837, and returning 
to Concord began in the same year the acquaintance 
with Emerson which ripened into the most important 
if not the most intimate friendship of his life. Emerson 
was thirty-four, Thoreau twenty years of age when they 
met, and the example and teachings of the elder were 
profound and vital influences in making the younger 
man what he speedily became — a Yankee stoic, hold- 
ing fast to the most lofty ideals, and aiming success- 
fully to reduce life to its simplest terms. "Cultivate 
poverty," he declared, "like a garden herb, like sage. 
Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts." And until 
the end of his days he remained true to the spirit of 
these words. 

Thoreau was twice a member of Emerson's house- 
hold, first in 1841, when he managed the garden and 
did other handiwork for his friend, and again in 1847, 
when, during Emerson's second visit to England, he 
took charge of his friend's household affairs. Between 
these years fell the Walden hermitage with which men 

101 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



most frequently associate his name. It was in 1845 
that Thoreau built himself a shanty by Walden Pond 
on the land owned by Emerson, and took up the life of 
a hermit in order that " he might the better study nature 
and become acquainted with himself." He spent two 
and a half years in this retreat, though often coming 
forth from it^ and out of his life of labor and study there 
grew "Walden," his most popular book and one of the 
freshest and most suggestive in our literature. It is a 
walk of a mile and a half from the heart of Concord to 
Walden Pond, but it is well worth the taking, for when 
one reaches the site of Thoreau's hut he finds the spot 
to be a most lovely one, with tall trees clothing the hill- 
side from the water's edge. There are now thousands 
of stones in the cairn gathered by pilgrims to 
mark the site of the hut, but of the hut itself 
there remains no trace. It was occupied for some 
years after Thoreau left it by a Scotch gardener, 
Hugh Whelan by name. Then it was bought by a 
farmer, who carried it three miles northward and 
long used it as a corncrib. Twenty odd years 
ago it was demolished to make room for a new 
barn, and from the ruins a few bits were rescued by 

Thoreau enthusiasts. 

102 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

After the Walden episode Thoreau supported him- 
self by fence-making and land-surveying, and by occa- 
sional lectures and contributions to the magazines. 
He lived during the last years of his life first in a little 
cottage which occupied the present site of the Thoreau 
House, and afterwards in a house which yet stands on 
the main street of the village, surrounded by trees of 
his planting. Thoreau 's real home, however, was 
never within four walls. The Concord Pan, as Alcott 
called him, made it from early manhood the serious 
business of his life to observe nature, and to that end 
spent half of each day the year round in field and wood. 
Emerson somewhere declares that it was a pleasure 
and a privilege to walk with him, adding that "his in- 
timacy with animals suggested what Thomas Fuller 
records of Butler the apiologist, ' that either he told the 
bees things, or the bees had told him.' Snakes coiled 
round his leg, the fishes swam into his hand, and he 
took them out of the water; he pulled the woodchuck 
out of its hole by the tail, and took the foxes under his 
protection from the hunters. His power of observation 
seemed to indicate additional senses; he saw as with 
microscope, heard as with ear-trumpet, and his memory 
was a photographic register of all he saw and heard." 

103 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



And the record of what he saw and heard he put on 
paper with a patient and reverential regard for truth 
which, supplemented by a style of rare beauty and pre- 
cision, made him the greatest nature writer that has 
thus far appeared in America. 

The best portrait of Thoreau that has come down to 
us shows a full-bearded man, with a refined, thoughtful 
face, and eyes giving token of suffering and sadness. 
It was taken the year before his death. ^Mien con- 
sumption claimed him as its victim, Thoreau faced the 
end with a quiet courage that proved the heroic ada- 
mant of his nature, working at his manuscripts so long 
as he could hold a pencil, but declaring to his friend 
Alcott that he should leave the world without a regret. 
He died on a morning in the early May of 1862 as gently 
as if sinking into sleep. "A truth-speaker he," said 
Emerson at Ills funeral, "capable of the most deep and 
strict conversation; a physician to the wounds of any 
soul; a friend, knowing not only the secret of frieudship, 
but almost worshipped by those few persons who re- 
sorted to him as their confessor, and knew the deep 
value of his mind and great heart. His soul was made 
for the noblest society; he had in a short life exhausted 
the capabilities of this world; wherever there is knowl- 

104 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

edge, wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, 
he will find a home." 

Emerson, Hawthorne and Thoreau head the roll of 
authors who have endeared Concord to every lover of 
American letters and American thought. A little lower 
on this roll, to mention only those who have joined the 
choir invisible, stand the names of Amos Bronson 
Alcott and his daughter; of William Ellery Channing, 
nephew and namesake of the great preacher; of George 
William Curtis and David Atwood Wasson. Alcott. 
a setf -taught philosopher who during a large part of his 
life exerted a moving influence on a fit audience, though 
few, — this by reason of an original and profound habit 
of mind directed toward the most serious questions 
that can occupy human thought, — came to reside in 
Concord in 1840, living first in the Hosmer cottage, a 
little way west of the village. He soon left his retreat 
to establish in the neighboring town of Harvard the 
community to which he gave the name of Fruitlands, 
but, when this attempt at social reform yielded 
only a harvest of thwarted hopes, he found his 
way back to Concord, where in 1845, with money 
lately bequeathed to his wife, he bought an estate 
on the Lexington road which he called Hillside, 

105 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

but which Hawthorne, when he became its owner, 
christened The Wayside. 

Hillside remained for three years the home of the 
Alcotts. Then came a residence in Boston, followed 
in 1857 by a second return to Concord, and the pur- 
chase of a house, on the Lexington road, near the home 
of Emerson and about three-quarters of a mile from the 
center of the village. Orchard House, the name its 
new owners gave it, is the very farm-house which Haw- 
thorne made the home of one of his heroes in "Sep- 
timius Felton." It was plain to the point of bareness 
when the Alcotts came to live in it, but soon received 
from its new owner's hand alterations and additions 
that converted it into a picturesque home. The present- 
day visitor finds it embowered in orchards and vines 
and fine old elm trees, and breathing an air of quiet 
and repose in happy keeping with its surroundings. 
Strolling about it one comes in its rear upon a queer 
little vine-covered temple, capable of seating less than 
a hundred persons, the whilom meeting-place of the 
Concord School of Philosophy, an organization in 
which the gentle soul of Alcott during his later days 
took unmeasured delight. 

Orchard House remained for many years the home 
106 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

of the Alcotts, and more than one visitor has placed on 
record a sympathetic account of the Ufe of plain fare 
and high thinking lived within its walls. There was, 
however, another side to the picture. "What is a 
philosopher ? " a guest of the Alcotts once asked a mem- 
ber of the household. " A philosopher," was the quick 
response, " is a man up in a balloon with his family and 
friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth 
and tr}ang to pull him down." This witty characteri- 
zation had a world of bitter truth in it, for Alcott, an 
idealist absorbed, as Holmes put it, in speculations 
which often led him into the fourth dimension of mental 
space, was, by the same token, one of the most im- 
practical of men. A majority of his workaday neigh- 
bors in Concord, with a contempt they took no pains 
to conceal, regarded him as a lazy man who did not 
provide for his family, and a philosopher who had 
nothing to say which could be turned into money. 
Emerson, writes his daughter, " was the one true friend 
who loved and understood and helped him," It was 
the friendship and comradeship of Emerson, dating 
from 1835, that brought Alcott a first, a second and a 
third time to Concord; and could the true story of their 
relations be told, it would have to do with help extended 

107 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

by Emerson to his less fortunate friend, not once but a 
hundred times, and always in the most delicate and 
considerate way. Alcott's daughter relates how on one 
occasion her father had four talks at Emerson's house, 
where he made thirty dollars. "R. W. E. probably 
put in twenty," she adds. "He has a sweet way of 
bestowing gifts on the table and under a book, or be- 
hind a candlestick, when he thinks father wants a little 
money and no one will help him earn." 

The aid Emerson was able to give him and the scanty 
returns from his own labors did not suffice the often 
penniless yet always serene and hopeful Alcott, and as 
the years sped and his own schemes for bread-winning 
one by one came to naught, the burden of the family 
support fell more and more on the gifted eldest daughter 
Louisa May. The girlhood of this uncommon woman, 
though made golden by the friendship and helpful 
counsel of Emerson and Theodore Parker, came soon 
to an end, and at sixteen, in order to aid the family re- 
sources, she was already turning her hand to any task 
which fell in her way. She put aside no service how- 
ever humble, but gradually, and by dint of patient 
labor, drifted toward authorship — her true vocation. 
Her first book was published when she was twenty-two, 

108 



EMERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

and after that she was seldom without hterary work of 
some kind. Her real opportunity, however, did not 
come to her until a Boston publisher made request for 
a girl's book. The result was "Little Women," a 
natural graphic story of her three sisters and herself in 
their Concord home. Dashed off at the speed of a re- 
porter who writes while the forms are waiting, this 
book, published in 1868, when she was thirty-six years 
of age, made its author's fame and her future. After 
that she wrote nearly a score of books to meet the eager 
demands of her publishers, and from them received in 
twenty years a comfortable fortune in royalty. 

What remains of the story of Louisa May Alcott's 
life of continuing self-sacrifice can be told in few words. 
Each of her books provided some added comfort or 
case for her family, one of these being the purchase for 
her parents of a larger house on the main street of Con- 
cord — the same in which Thoreau passed his last days. 
There on a November day in 1877 the mother fell asleep, 
and the daughter who had guarded her so tenderly 
turned from her grave to take up other burdens — the 
care of the children of her dead and widowed sisters. 
Boston became her home after her mother's death, and 
there in the pleasant retreat she had made for him, in 

109 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

March, 1888, occurred the death of her father. Born 
on his birthday, the daughter who had been his staff in 
life was not separated from him in death. Ill and weak 
herself she could not be with her father at the end, but 
visited him when she was able. A few days before his 
death, driving to see him for the last time, she caught 
a cold, and on the following day was seized with violent 
pain in the head, which the doctors at once pronounced 
serious. Her illness progressed with fatal swiftness, 
and in the afternoon of March 6 she passed quietly 
away, not knowing that her father had preceded her. 
They brought her body to Concord and buried it in the 
village cemetery across the feet of her father, mother, 
and sister, " that she might take care of them as she had 
done all her life." 

William Ellery Channing, a poet who commands an 
audience few and select, but sure to grow with the years, 
settled in Concord with his bride, a sister of Margaret 
Fuller, the year before the Hawthornes came to live in 
the Old Manse. The Channings dwelt first in a cottage 
on the Lexington road; then on Punkatasset Hill, a 
mile or so north of the village, and finally in a house on 
the main street opposite the last residence of Thoreau, 
who kept his boat, under a group of willows, in the 

110 



f^MERSON AND OTHERS IN CONCORD 

garden of his friends, and from that harbor made all 
his later voyages, Mrs. Channing, a woman of rare 
physical loveliness, and as gifted as she was beautiful, 
died in middle life; and her husband passed the last 
of his more than eighty years under the roof of another 
Concord poet, Frank B. Sanborn. The residence of 
George William Curtis in Concord was a passing in- 
cident of his early manhood, when with his brother 
Burrill he lived for a time on the farm of Edmund 
Hosmer, the sturdy, long-headed yeoman celebrated 
by Emerson in the apologue of his "Saadi" and by 
Thoreau in "Walden." David Atwood Wasson like- 
wise resided in Concord only for a brief period, but he 
continued in friendly communication with the mem- 
bers of its literary circle, often visited them, and now 
takes his rest among them. 

Wasson 's grave is in the village cemetery quaintly 
named Sleepy Hollow, one of the most lovely and pic- 
turesque of burial garths, its vales and slopes half hidden 
by trees whose shade and murmur give the illusion of 
primeval solitude. Around him sleep the Emersons, 
the Hawthornes, the Thoreaus, the Alcotts and the 
Channings. The grave of Hawthorne, bearing witness 
by its unusual length to the lofty stature of its occupant, 

111 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

is in a narrow lot, and the white stones at its head and 
foot are graven only with the name of the well-beloved 
romancer. Close at hand is the burial plot of the 
Thoreaus. An ornate and highly polished granite slab, 
on which are recorded the names of the different mem- 
bers of the family, stands in the center, but the grave of 
the Thoreau whom the world remembers is marked 
only by a low headstone, inscribed "Henry." Further 
up the hill and deeper among the shadows is the grave 
of Emerson, overgrown with myrtle, and, like that of 
Hawthorne, by its length helping one to call up the 
vision of the tall poet and philosopher who sleeps be- 
neath it. He who recoiled from all pomp and show in 
life has his wishes respected in death. There is at the 
head of the long, glossy grave only a huge unhewn 
boulder, to tell the wayfarer that here Ralph Waldo 
Emerson takes his rest. Those who hold in reverence 
the noble yet austerely simple genius which made the 
living man one of the mighty forces of the intellectual 
world would not have it otherwise. 



112 



Chapter V 
Cambridge and its Worthies 

Cambridge on the Charles, a short ride from Con- 
cord, Hke its sister town oflFers to the lover of the past 
a full sheaf of precious memories. It was one of the 
first settlements planted by the Puritans, and it has been 
for the better part of three hundred years the seat of 
America's oldest college. Town and school came into 
being during the first half of the seventeenth century; 
before its close Newtown, as the settlement was called 
in the day of first things, had become a favorite abode 
of courtly and scholarly people; and such it has con- 
tinued to the present time. 

A stroll through and around Cambridge recalls at 
every turn some eminent and honored name, but the 
pilgrim making acquaintance with its literary land- 
marks is sure, as did the writer, to go first to the Craigie 
House at 105 Brattle Street, a roomy, square-roofed 
mansion overlooking the Charles River, which was for 
more than two score years the home of Longfellow, 
and which before the poet's time played so eventful a 

113 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

part in affairs that it has been claimed to possess more 
historic interest than any building in New England, 
save Faneuil Hall. Colonel John Vassall built the 
house in 1759, but being a firm loyalist fled to England 
at the opening of the Revolution, and his home found a 
new occupant in that stout soldier, Colonel John Glover, 
of Marblehead, who quartered some of his troops 
within its walls. This use of the house, however, was 
a brief one, for when, in the early summer of 1775, 
Washington came to Cambridge to assume command 
of the patriot army, he was so pleased with its appear- 
ance that, having had it cleaned, he made it his head- 
quarters, and remained in it until the close of the siege 
of Boston in April of the following year. 

Colonel Vassall 's property having been confiscated, 
his Cambridge house, about 1792, found a new owner 
in Dr. Andrew Craigie, who had served as apothecary- 
general of the northern army during the Revolution, 
and who, being a man of wealth, made the mansion 
the center of a large hospitality. Time and luckless 
speculations, however, wrought havoc with Craigie's 
fortune, and after his death, in 1819, his wife, to eke 
out a slender income, let rooms to various inmates. 
Thus Edward Everett took his bride to Craigie House 

114 



CAMBRIDGE AND ITS W O R F II I E S 

in 1822, and so in 1832 did Jared Sparks. Again, five 
years later Longfellow, soon after entering on the duties 
of his Harvard professorship, took quarters under the 
roof of Mrs. Craigie, where he had for a fellow lodger 
Joseph E, Worcester, the lexicographer, who, when 
Mrs. Craigie died in 1841, bought the house and be- 
came the poet's landlord. 

Longfellow w^as still within the shadow of a great 
sorrow, the untimely death of the wife of his youth, 
when he came to Cambridge, and his first days there 
were sad and lonely ones. Sunnier hours, however, 
soon fell to his lot. He already counted among his 
close friends Cornelius C. Felton, then professor of 
Greek and afterward president of the college, and he 
was soon on terms of familiar intimacy with such con- 
genial spirits as George S. Hillard and Charles Sumner, 
the latter at that time an instructor in the law school, 
while in 1843 a yet greater happiness came to him in his 
marriage to one worthy in all ways to be the comrade 
and helpmeet of a poet. The second Mrs. Longfellow, 
the Mary Ashburton of her husband's "Hyperion," 
was Frances Appleton, daughter of Nathan Appleton, 
a Boston merchant. They had met in 183C in Switzer- 
land, when she was a maiden of nineteen, and she had 

115 



NEVv ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

grown with the years into a woman of rare physical and 
spiritual loveliness. Longfellow brought his bride to 
Craigie House, and soon the mansion was purchased 
for them by the wife's father, who afterward added to 
his gift the land opposite, now the public park given 
by the poet's children to the Longfellow Memorial 
Association, thus securing an open view of the river 
and of the blue hills of Milton in the distance. 

The poet's first study in Craigie House was an upper 
chamber which had been Washington's private room, 
but in 1845 he moved to the large front room adjoining 
the library on the first floor, which in an earlier time 
had been used by Washington as an office. This re- 
mained his workroom during the remainder of his life, 
and here or in the chamber above stairs were produced 
almost all of his books, save the two which date from 
his Bowdoin professorship. The latter-day visitor to 
Longfellow's study finds it filled with cherished re- 
minders of his life and work, for the present tenant of 
Craigie House, the poet's daughter, lovingly preserves 
the mansion and its interior substantially as they were 
in her father's lifetime. The study contains his chair 
and desk, the inkstand which had once been Coleridge's, 
the statuette of Goethe mentioned in "Hyperion," and, 

116 



CAMBRIDGE AND ITS WORTHIES 

■ 

among other personal relics, the arm-chair carved from 
the "spreading chestnut tree" of his well-known verses, 
which the cliildren of Cambridge presented to him on 
his seventy-second birthday. 

In the rear of the study is the library, a long apart- 
ment opening upon a garden and with crowded book- 
cases lining its walls. Two Corinthian columns at one 
end add a touch of dignity to the apartment; and near a 
window, looking on the garden, stands the poet's table, 
where he often read and worked. " The Old Clock on 
the Stairs" holds its accustomed place in the angle of 
the massive staircase leading to the book-lined upper 
chamber in which Longfellow lodged when he first 
came to Craigie House; and in the room which was long 
his sleeping-apartment one finds a portrait of his wife 
hanging over the fireplace, and beside the bed a small 
bookcase holding the elder English poets — his beloved 
companions in the night watches of his last years. 

Longfellow dwelt in Craigie House almost from his 
first coming to Cambridge until his death. There his 
children were born ; there his second wife died the tragic 
death which has been so often described, from injuries 
received by fire; and there for nearly half a centurj' he 
dispensed a generous and cordial hospitality. Pilgrims 

117 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

of every class and from every country came in endless 
procession to pay him homage, and to receive a welcome 
which but deepened their admiration for the poet and 
their affection for the man. Nor had the welcome he 
gave his guests other source than the promptings of the 
kindliest of natures. " Often the man who dined with 
Longfellow," writes one of his friends, "was the man 
who needed a dinner; and from what I have seen of the 
courtesy that governed at that board, I am sure that 
such a man could never have felt himself the least 
honored guest. The poet's heart " — could finer 
praise be given him ? — " was open to all the homeless- 
ness of the world. " And the sweet courtesy that sprang 
from such a source remained with him to the end. On 
the day that he was taken ill, less than a week before 
his death in March, 1882, three Boston school-boys 
came to Cambridge on their Saturday holiday to ask 
his autograph. The benign lover of children, we are 
told, welcomed them heartily, showed them a hundred 
interesting objects in his house, and then wrote his name 
for them, and for the last time. 

A frequent and welcome guest at Craigie House 
during Longfellow's first years in Cambridge was 
William Ware, then at the height of a popularity long 

118 



CAMBRIDGE AND ITS W O R T H I K S 

since toppled to the ground. This now half-forgotten 
author sprang from a family of ministers, being a son 
of Henry Ware, who, after long service in the pulpit, 
became professor of divinity at Harvard and helped 
with Channing to found the conservative school of 
Unitarianism. The younger Ware was born in Hing- 
ham, in 1797, was graduated at Harvard at the age 
of nineteen, and for fifteen years after 1821 was a 
minister in New York. Then he settled in Cambridge 
and here he made his home during most of the 
sixteen years of life that remained to him. His three 
historical novels, "Zenobia," " AureHan"and "Julian," 
have vividness and energy, and there is cause for won- 
der that they should be neglected by a generation 
which delights in "Ben Hur" and "Quo Vadis." 

Time and the hand of the improver have swept away 
the house not far from the Common in which Ware 
passed his last days; and one regrets that a like fate has 
overtaken the roomy gambrel -roofed mansion which 
formerly fronted the northern boundary of Harvard 
Square between Kirkland Street and North Avenue, 
shaded by mighty elms and set in a garden of sweet- 
smelling old fashioned flowers, for the mansion in ques- 
tion had a history running far back into the colonial 

119 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

period, and was besides the birthplace of Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes. A prosperous tailor built it, and, after 
making it his home for many years, sold it to a more 
prosperous farmer, who in the fullness of time be- 
queathed it to his son. After the Revolution it passed 
into the hands of Eliphalet Pearson, long professor of 
Hebrew in the college, and in 1807 became the home of 
Abiel Holmes, for the better part of forty years the 
sturdy and resolutely orthodox pastor of the First 
Church of Cambridge. This Abiel Holmes, who 
claimed descent from one of the earliest settlers in the 
colony of Massachusetts Bay, chose for his second wife 
a daughter of Oliver Wendell, a leading lawyer of his 
time, who was descended from the Wendells, the 
Olivers, the Bradstreets and the Quincys. 

And in such a house, to such parents and of such 
ancestry in August, 1809, was born a son to whom 
was given the family names of Oliver and Wendell. 
This son, in the opening chapter of "The Poet at the 
Breakfast Table," has described his birthplace with all 
the vividness that l)clongs to early impressions — the 
great dimly lighted garret beneath tlic roof; the attic 
chambers "which themselves had histories"; the rooms 
of the second story, "chambers of birth and death, 

120 



CAMBRIDGE AND ITS WORTHIES 

sacred to silent memories"; and the heavy-beamed 
study on the ground floor, with its shelves of books, and 
its floors thickly strewn with the dents which tradition 
credited to the hea\'y rifle butts of the Continental 
soldiers. "It was a great happiness," he adds, "to 
have been bom in an old house haunted by such recol- 
lections, . . . with fields of waving grass, and trees 
and singing birds, and that vast territory of four or five 
acres around it, to give a child a sense that he was 
born to a noble principality." 

Parson Holmes dwelt in the gambrel-roofed house 
until his death, in 1837; and it was the home of his son 
during the latter's childhood, youth and period of pro- 
fessional studies. There, too, at the age of twenty, 
the younger Holmes laid the foundation of his fame as 
a poet. The old frigate "Constitution" lay at the 
Charlestown Navy Yard about to be broken up, and 
Holmes, then in his senior year at Harvard, went one 
day to see the historic craft. Returning to his home, 
an inspiration came to him, and in one of its attic rooms 
he sat down and scribbled in pencil the lines entitled 
"Old Ironsides" — 

" An old song, which some, perchance, have seen. 
In stale gazette or cobwebbcd magazine. 
121 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

There was an hour when patriots dared profane 
The mast that Britain strove to bow in vain ; 
And one who hstened to the tale of shame, 
Whose heart still answered to that sacred name, 
Whose eye still followed o'er his country's tides 
The glorious flag, our brave Old Ironsides ! 
From yon lone attic, on a summer's morn, 
Thus mocked the spoilers with his school-boy scorn." 

This splendid lyric, published in 1830, struck fire in 
the popular heart, and brought from W^ashington an 
order which saved the old ship from destruction. Nine 
years later its author took leave of his birthplace, and, 
following a brief professorship at Dartmouth, began 
the practice of medicine in Boston, which thereafter 
claimed him as its own. A younger brother, however, 
lived all his life of eighty-seven years in Cambridge. 
John Holmes, described by his friend Lowell as the best 
and most delightful of men, was graduated at Harvard 
at the age of twenty. Then there came to him a not 
uncommon crisis in the life of a young man. He fell 
in love with a governess, a lovely and amiable girl, but 
Jiis mother and brother opposed their union, and while 
the matter was under discussion the girl suddenly died. 

The remainder of John Holmes' days were those of a 
bachelor recluse, who gave his friendship only to a few 

122 



CAMBRIDGE AND ITS WORTHIES 



kindred souls. A man of rare taste and cultivation, 
he wrote much, and those who have seen his writings 
say that he had a fascinating style, adorned with flash- 
ing wit and homely humor; but he cared not for the 
praise of the multitude, and nothing of his ever found 
its way into print. During the greater part of his life, 
save for two visits to Europe, he lived alone with his 
mother in the old homestead, caring for her in the most 
tender way until her death, in 1862, at the age of 
ninety-five. Ten years later the old homestead became 
the property of the college, and John Holmes betook 
himself to a modest house in the little Cambridge street 
misnamed the Appian Way, where he dwelt until his 
death in 1899, cared for only by a housekeeper as fond 
of solitude and quiet as himself. The gambrcl-roofed 
house of his own and his brother's boyhood, after its 
purchase by the college, was occupied in turn by 
William Everett and James B. Thayer, but in 1885, 
being no longer considered a safe habitation, it was 
leveled to the ground, 

Dr. Holmes has somewhere described in whimsical 
fashion the institution in which he and his brother got 
their preliminary schooling. This was a dame's school 
in Prospect Street, whose sharp-eyed mistress " wielded 

123 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

a long wand of willow with which she could without 
leaving her desk reach any child in the room," and there 
they had for a classmate a girl, Sarah Margaret Fuller 
by name, who was destined to fill a large place in the 
literary history of her time. The birthplace of this 
remarkable woman, the oldest child of a keen-witted 
and ambitious lawyer, yet stands at 71 Cherry Street 
in that part of the town known as Cambridgeport; but 
it long since fell on squalid days, and one could wish 
that time had spared in its stead the fine old mansion 
which was her home during most of the years of her 
girlhood and early womanhood. This was the roomy 
house built by Chief Justice Dana, which stood, until 
its destruction by fire in 1839, on what is still called 
Dana Hill, between the present Dana and Ellery Streets. 
A yet later home of the Fullers was the Brattle house, a 
picturesque old pile built by one of the merchant princes 
of the colonial period, which still stands at the eastern 
end of Brattle Street, though now dwarfed by the great 
buildings of the University Press, and shorn of its gen- 
erous grounds and the wealth of trees and flowers 
which were its chief charm in an earlier time. 

Margaret Fuller was absent from Cambridge from 
1832 to 1842, — the period of her growing fame as editor 

124 



CAMBRIDGE AND ITS WORTHIES 

of the " Dial " and as a critic of unusual boldness and 
insight, — but returned in the year last named and 
bought the house formerly numbered 8 Ellery Street. 
Here she lived with her widowed mother until July, 
1843, when they removed to a house in Prospect Street, 
near the dame's school of her childliood. This was 
Margaret Fuller's last home in Cambridge, for she left 
the town in the autumn of 1844 to enter upon the 
wanderings that were to take her first to New York, 
then to Italy, and finally to her tragic death on Fire 
Island beach. It should be related in passing that the 
Dana mansion, mentioned as the home of her early 
womanhood, was also the birthplace of the poet, Rich- 
ard Henry Dana, Sr., who resided in Cambridge during 
the whole of his active literary life. The author of the 
" Buccaneer " removed to Boston soon after his son and 
namesake fared forth upon the voyages which bore 
noble fruit in " Two Years Before the Mast " ; but the 
younger Dana returned to Cambridge in 1851 and built 
the house numbered 4 Berkeley Street, in which he 
lived until a short time before his death. 

When the Fullers dwelt in the Brattle house, a play- 
mate of the romping younger members of the family 
was a growing lad who half a century later was to be- 

125 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

come the biographer of their older and staider sister. 
This was Thomas Wentworth Higsrinson, another 
Cambridge author native to the soil. Born in a house 
on Kirkland Street, Colonel Higginson was graduated 
at Harvard in the class of 1841, studied for the ministry, 
and for several years filled pulpits in Newburyport and 
Worcester. After that came ardent service in the anti- 
slavery cause, and, during the Civil War, service of a 
less peaceful sort as colonel of the first regiment of 
colored troops enlisted in South Carolina. His fight- 
ing days ended, he turned to the quieter pursuit of 
letters, and taught the world to know him as an essayist 
gifted with a delightful way of saying things, and a new 
and individual point of view. Thirty-five volumes 
great and small now attest the industry and abounding 
versatility of his middle and later years. Colonel 
Higginson following his return to civil life was a resi- 
dent of Newport until 1878, when he returned to Cam- 
bridge, where he has since had his home at 29 Bucking- 
ham Street in a dwelling modest and unpretentious in 
outward seeming, but within rich in books and in 
speaking mementos of its owner's long and varied life. 
Thence it is a short walk to what was once Norton's 
Woods and to Shady Hill, where dwells another white- 



CAMBRIDGE AND IIS W O R T HIES 

haired author whose life and work link the Cambridge 
of the present to the Cambridge of an earlier day. 
Shady Hill, a splendid example of the houses planned 
by the space-loving architects of our grandfathers' time, 
was owned and occupied for many years by Andrews 
Norton, professor of sacred literature in Harvard Di- 
vinity School, and it has been the life-long home of 
his son, Charles Eliot Norton, whose career as scholar, 
teacher and author has covered a wide range, and 
brought him the close and enduring friendship of some 
of the choicest spirits of his generation. One of these 
was Arthur Hugh Clough, the English poet, who, in 
1852, made his home for a brief period in Cambridge, 
where, after the lapse of half a century, his rare gifts 
of mind and heart are still held in cherished remem- 
brance. The last days of Clough's American sojourn 
were passed at Shady Hill, but during the greater part 
of his stay in Cambridge he lodged in a house in Garden 
Street, hard by the Common and nearly opposite the 
old Holmes homestead. In the same part of Cam- 
bridge as Shady Hill, and secluded also in a grove of 
venerable trees, stands at 30 Oxford Street the last 
home of John G. Palfrey, where, in the closing years of 
his life as preacher, editor, college professor and state 

127 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

and national law-maker, he wrote his minute and lifeless 
history of New England. This, it is to be feared, now 
finds few but student readers, but the fact lives that its 
high-minded author led in the founding of the Free 
Soil party, and played a hero's part in the contest which 
ended in the abolition of slavery. 

Like the homes of Norton and Palfrey, many other 
of the literary landmarks of Cambridge have intimate 
association with the history of the college. Wads- 
worth House, a gambrel-roofed structure at the eastern 
end of Hars'ard Square, for six score years furnished 
a home for successive heads of the institution, among 
them Josiah Quincy and Edward Everett, the scholarly 
Felton being the first to occupy the new house built for 
incumbents of that post at the head of Quincy Street. 
Jared Sparks, who gave his name as author or editor to 
fully a hundred volumes of history and biography, has 
been mentioned as a passing occupant of Craigie House, 
but he lived while president of the college and during 
his after years in a roomy dwelling which yet stands in 
Quincy Street, being now occupied by the theological 
school of the New Jerusalem Church. A house of un- 
usual size and architecture adjoining the Sparks place 
was occupied by Louis Agassiz during the last twenty 

128 



CAMBRIDGE AND ITS WORTHIES 

years of his life; and thence a short detour into Kirk- 
land Street, the Professor's Row of an earlier day, 
brings one to the vine-clad, rose-embowered dwelling 
which was long the home of Francis J. Child, best be- 
loved of the Harvard professors of his time, and fore- 
most among American scholars in Anglo-Saxon and 
early English literature. 

Again hard by the Brattle mansion in Brattle Street, 
and on the same side of the way, stands a three-storied 
brick house, with small square upper -^nndows and a 
veranda along its eastern front, which was occupied 
by Justice Joseph Story, while head of the law school, 
and in which also dwelt his son William, the poet and 
sculptor. A longer stroll from Harvard Square leads 
to the Botanic Gardens, and to the house which was 
the home for more than a score of years of Asa Gray, 
who there rounded out his career as scientist and man 
of letters. 

Robert Carter, sometime secretary to Prescott and 
the intimate friend of Lowell, with whom he was asso- 
ciated in the editorship of the short-lived "Pioneer," 
once abode in Sparks Street near the corner of Brattle, 
while among lettered dwellers in the Cambridge of a 
later time have been the elder Henry James, who lived 

129 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

during his closing years and died in the house num- 
bered 20 Quincy Street, now remodeled into the 
Colonial Club; Elisha Mulford, author of the "Re- 
public of God," whose last home was at 41 Bowdoin 
Street; and Christopher P. Cranch, the poet and Vir- 
gilian translator, who ended his long life at 27 EUery 
Street. Forceythe Willson, a maker of graceful and 
tender verse, who died too soon for the full ripening of 
his talents and fame, was numbered among Cambridge 
authors from 1863 to 186G, during which period he had 
his home in a pleasant old mansion on the Mount 
Auburn road, looking out upon the Charles; while a 
visit to 19 Buckingham Street takes one to the modest 
house, a few doors removed from the latter-day resi- 
dence of Colonel Higginson, which was the home, dur- 
ing the greater part of his active literary life, of Horace 
E. Scudder, editor of the "Atlantic Monthly" and 
author of many delightful books. 

Henry Adams, while a Harvard professor and en- 
gaged upon his masterly " History of the United States," 
was a lodger in Wadsworth House; and the Berkeley 
Street house built and long occupied by the younger 
Dana was for several years the home of John Fiske, 
who resided in Cambridge from his first coming to 

130 



C A M B R I D (i E A X I) 1 T S ^V O R T HIES 

collegr> until his death. After 1877, however, Mr. 
Fiske lived at 2'-2 Berkeley Street, and there wrote most 
of the philosophical and historical works which made 
him, in his chosen field, the most popular author of his 
generation. A new and larger house at the corner of 
Brattle and Ash Streets, now occupied by his widow, 
holds a pathetic interest for all who cherish his memory. 
It was built by the historian in 1901, in order, as he told 
his friends, to realize "the library of his dreams," but 
the splendid apartment in which these dreams took form 
must ever lack a master, his sudden death having oc- 
curred as he was preparing to move into it. 

^Vllen Fiske occupied the Dana house he had William 
Dean Ho wells for neighbor across the way. Ho wells' 
coming to Cambridge in 186G was practically coincident 
with the beginning of his long connection with the 
"Atlantic Monthly," first as assistant to James T. 
Fields and then as editor, which post he resigned in 
1881, to be followed by Aldrich. Dwelling first in a 
small house he purchased on Sacramento Street near 
the corner of Oxford, then in Berkeley Street, and 
finally at 37 Concord Avenue, the years which he passed 
in Cambridge were among the most fruitful of a fruitful 
career, for they gave to the world " A Chance Acquaint- 

131 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

ance," "Their Wedding Journey," "A Foregone Con- 
clusion," "A Counterfeit Presentiment," and the 
studies of Cambridge hfe entitled " Suburban Sketches." 

It is not, however, in these delightful papers but in 
one of his later books that Howells refers to James 
Russell Lowell as the most devoted Cantabrigian of his 
time. Longfellow and Lowell are the names that 
spring first into one's thoughts when mention is made 
of Cambridge, and the rambles which began at Craigie 
House may well end at Elmwood, where the younger 
poet was born, lived and died. A square three-storied 
structure facing Brattle Street, perhaps a third of a mile 
beyond Craigie House, Elmwood boasts a history run- 
ning well back into the colonial period. It was built 
about 1760 by Thomas Oliver, the last royal lieutenant- 
governor of the province of Massachusetts. Oliver 
was forced to resign his office in the stirring days of 
1774, and two years later, when the Revolution broke, 
fled to England, while his Cambridge mansion, after 
serving as a hospital for the wounded from Bunker 
Hill, passed with the return of peace to the ownership 
of Elbridge Gerry, who occupied it for a quarter of a 
century as his country seat. 

Following Gerry's death his widow sold it to the 
132 



CAMBRIDGE AND ITS WORTHIES 

Reverend Charles Lowell, long pastor of the West 
Church in Boston, and there on Washington's birthday, 
1819, his son, James Russell Lowell, entered life. 
The younger Lowell passed his boyhood and college 
days at Elmwood, and he returned to it, after a brief 
and briefless excursion into the law, to enter upon the 
lettered career that always had been nearest his heart. 
His first volume of poems was published in 1841, and 
in 1845 appeared his first prose work. Between these 
years came his courtship of the gifted and beautiful 
Maria White, and a union which knew no shadow until 
broken in 1853 by the death of the wife. Within this 
happy period fell the publication of " The Vision of 
Sir Launfal," "A Fable for Critics," and the first series 
of the "Biglow Papers," which proved their author 
a satirist of the first class, and a fiery and unflinching 
foe of slavery. 

The death of Mrs. Lowell, which brought to the 
husband the first great sorrow of his life, also marked 
the close of the first period of his career. The second 
opened in 1855 when he accepted the Harvard professor- 
ship, succeeding Longfellow, which he retained for 
twenty years and which made him, perhaps, the most 
memorable figure in the minds of several generations 

133 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

of Harvard students. During this period also Lowell 
married again, served as the first editor of the "At- 
lantic Monthly," published "My Study Windows" and 
"Among my Books," and in a second series of the 
"Biglow Papers" revealed the patriot whose reverent 
love of country was to find noblest expression in the 
Harvard Commemoration, Concord and Cambridge 
odes. Finally, in 1877, came his appointment as min- 
ister to Spain and the eight years of diplomatic service 
there and in England, from which he returned an 
aging man to end his days in the land of his birth. 

The growth of Cambridge from village to town and 
from town to city has robbed Elmwood of a goodly part 
of the ample grounds and the abundant growth of trees 
wliich made it in the poet's youth a genuine country 
place. The house itself, however, has undergone small 
outward change, and entering the great hall which runs 
straight through its middle the visitor easily recalls 
the interior as it appeared in Lowell's time. Great 
wainscoted rooms open from the hall on either hand, 
and a broad staircase with twisted banisters leads to 
the second story, where are the chamber in which the 
poet was born and the "attic high beneath the roof" 
which he occupied as a study during the lifetime of his 

134 



CAMBRIDGE AND ITS WORTHIES 

father. In this room, looking off over the sweep of tlie 
Charles and the lines of the horizon hills, most of Lowell's 
earlier work was done, and one finds frequent and lov- 
ing reference to it in his letters. "Here I am in my 
garret," he wrote in 1848 to his friend Charles F. Briggs. 
" I slept here when I was a curly-headed boy, and used 
to see visions between me and the ceiling, and dream 
the so often recurring dream of having the earth put 
into my hand like an orange. In it I used to be shut 
up without a lamp — my mother saying that none of 
her children should be afraid of the dark — to hide my 
head under the pillows and then not be able to shut out 
the shapeless monsters that thronged about me, minted 
in my brain. It is a pleasant room, facing, from the 
position of the house, about equally toward the morn- 
ing and the afternoon. In winter I can see the sunset, 
in summer I can see it only as it lights up the tall trunks 
of the English elms in front of the house, making them 
sometimes, when the sky behind them is lead colored, 
seem of the most brilliant yellow. In v.inter my view 
is a wide one, taking in a part of Boston. I can see one 
long curve of the Charles, and the wide fields between 
me and Cambridge, and the flat marshes beyond the 
river, smooth and silent with glittering snow. As the 

135 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



spring advances, and one after another of our trees put 
forth, the landscape is cut off from me piece by piece, 
till the end of May I am closeted in a cool and rustling 
privacy of leaves. Then I begin to bud with the season. 
Towards the close of winter I become wearied of closed 
windows and fires. I feel dammed up, and yet there 
is not flow enough in me to gather any head of water. 
When I can sit at my open windows and my friendly 
leaves hold their hands before my eyes to prevent their 
wandering to the landscape, I can sit down and write." 
In this room, with its books, its table with papers and 
letters in confusion, and its choice collection of pipes, 
Lowell for many years worked and studied and wel- 
comed his friends, but after the death of his father the 
libraries were brought together in two connected rooms 
on the lower floor. The room thereafter used by the 
poet as a study, with deep paneled recesses on either 
side of ample fireplaces, had windows overlooking 
green levels among the trees on the lawn; and to the 
rear of this room, or rather of its cliimney, for there was 
no partition, was another whose windows showed the 
grove and shrubbery at the back toward the hill. The 
prevailing tone of these rooms was somber, but the fur- 
niture was antique, solid and richly carved, and books 

13G 



C A M B R I D GE AND ITS WORTHIES 

were everywhere, thousands of volumes gathered by 
one who loved literature for its own sake, and holding 
the best works of man in many languages. An English 
friend and visitor, Leslie Stephen, has sketched for us a 
delightful picture of Lowell among his books in the busy 
middle years of his career, " All around us," he writes, 
"were the crowded book shelves, whose appearance 
showed them to be the companions of the true literary 
workman, their ragged bindings, and thumbed pages 
scored with frequent pencil marks, implying that they 
were a student's tools, not mere ornamental playthings. 
He would sit among his books, pipe in mouth, a book 
in hand, hour after hour. Or he would look from his 
'study windows' and dwell lovingly on the beauties of 
the American elm, or the gambols of the gray squirrel 
on his lawn. To see Lowell in his home and the home 
of his father was to realize more distinctly what is in- 
deed plain enough in all his books, how deeply he had 
struck his roots into his native earth. Cosmopolitan 
as he was in knowledge, with the literature not only of 
England but of France and England at his fingers' ends, 
the genuine Yankee, the Hosca Biglow, was never far 
below the surface. No stay-at-home Englishman of an 
older generation, buried in some country corner, in an 

137 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

ancestral mansion, and steeped to the lips in old-world 
creeds, could have been more racy of the soil." 

Lowell's last days were quiet and uneventful, but 
they were also lonely ones, for his second wife had died 
in England, and many of the friends and comrades of 
earlier years had likewise passed from life. His winters 
at first were spent in England, and his summers at his 
daughter's home in Southboro; but ere long, with his 
daughter and her children, he renewed his life at Elm- 
wood, which during his absence had been for a time 
the home of another poet — Thomas Bailey Aldrich. 
"I feel," he wrote, soon after his return to Elmwood, 
" as if Charon had ferried me the wrong way, and yet it 
is into a world of ghosts that he has brought me." 
Elmwood, however, remained as of old the place which 
he loved best on earth. "I have but one home," he 
declared to a friend who wished him to settle in Wash- 
ington, " and that is the house where I was born, and 
where, if it shall please God, I hope to die; I shouldn't 
be happy anywhere else." There, as the shadows deep- 
ened about him, he found, in the cherished companion- 
ship of his books and of the friends who remained to 
him, a happiness none the less serene because touched 
with sadness, and there, as he wished, the inevitable 

133 



C A M B R I D G E A X I) ITS \\ O R T H I E S 

end came to him, his death occurring in August, 1891, 
after an illness of a year. 

The grounds of Elmwood run nearly to the gate of 
Mount Auburn Cemetery, and there its master now lies 
among his kindred. Lowell's grave, marked by a 
simple slab of slate, is at the foot of a ridge upon the 
brow of which Longfellow sleeps beneath a monument 
of brownstone. Close at hand Willis and Holmes take 
their rest, the latter in the same grave with his wife, and 
about and beyond arc the graves of Charles Sumner 
and Rufus Choatc, of William Ellery Channing and 
Phillips Brooks, of Edward Everett and Joseph Story, 
of Charlotte Cushman and Edwin Booth, and of Louis 
Agassiz, whose resting-place is fitly marked by a group 
of pine trees from his native Switzerland, and by a 
boulder from the glacier of Aar, with unchiseled sur- 
face now overgrown with the lichens he loved. 



139 



Chapter VI 
A Day of Literary Beginnings 

The growth which has transformed old Cambridge 
from a village to a city suburb has also swept away 
nearly all visible tokens of the Boston of an earlier time- 
The man born and reared therein, returning after long 
absence, finds it so changed that for him the town he 
knew in his youth has become a thing of dreams. The 
modern city not only adds to itself, but incessantly 
rends itself in pieces, and the work of leveling and 
rearing anew goes on without ceasing in all parts of the 
town. The Boston of fifty, nay thirty years ago, al- 
though no mean city, survives only in the course of its 
public streets and in a few public buildings and churches. 
And yet, for the literary pilgrim, old Boston still lives 
and has a being — a city charged with romance and 
suggestion, and with paves echoing the footfalls of 
bookmen whose memory the world will not let die. 
There is no corner in the older quarters of the town but 
is storied ground to every lover of the past. 

Boston's earliest literary landmarks, if one puts aside 
140 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

the preachers and pamphleteers of the colonial period, 
have to do with the men whose oratory, in pulpit and 
forum, was a potent and uplifting force in the first half 
of the last century. One finds at the north corner of 
Federal and Channing Streets the site of the church 
where, in 1803, William Ellery Channing began the 
long pastorate which made him the leader of the Uni- 
tarians, if not the founder of that sect. Yet it is not as 
the foremost figure in a great theological controversy, 
but by reason of the moral and spiritual influence, 
w^hich the rare quality of his oratory made a lifting and 
ennobling force, that Channing holds a secure place 
in our history. " From the high old-fashioned pulpit," 
writes one who had often felt the spell of his spoken 
w^ord, " his face beamed down, it may be said, like the 
face of an angel, and his voice floated dow^n like a voice 
from higher spheres. It was a voice of rare power and 
attraction, clear, flowing and melodious, slightly plain- 
tive, so as curiously to catch and win upon the hearer's 
sympathy. Its melody and pathos in the reading of a 
hymn was alone a charm that might bring men to the 
listening like the attraction of sweet music. Often, 
too, when the signs of physical frailty were apparent, 
it might be said that his speech was watched and waited 

141 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

for with that sort of hush as if one was waiting to catch 
his last earthly words." Channing's first Boston home 
was in the thoroughfare which now bears his name, 
but which was then called Berry Street. Afterward 
he lived for many years in the house numbered 83 Mt. 
Vernon Street, and thence on an October day in 1842 
he was borne to his rest in Mount Auburn Cemetery. 
When Channing was still known as Berry Street, 
there stood at its intersection with Sister Street a modest 
wooden building styled the Berry Street Academy. 
History has not preserved the names of those who 
sought knowledge in this humble seat of learning, long 
since replaced by a business structure, but its master 
was the father of John Howard Payne. Though born 
in New York the younger Payne passed a part of his 
boyhood in Boston, and here as the leader of an ama- 
teur company composed of his boy companions began 
the career as an actor which later carried him to many 
lands. Thrown into an English jail for debt, he opened 
his prison door with a successful piece of play-making. 
Then he sent some plays in manuscript to Charles 
Kemble. One of these was " Clari, the Maid of Milan," 
now remembered only through the song for which it 
was the original setting, — " Home, Sweet Home." 

142 



A DAY OF T. ITERARY BEGINNINGS 

That plaintive ballad, wedded to the melody the loiter- 
ing actor had first from the lips of an Italian peasant 
girl, melted the heart of London and of the world, and 
with its one touch of nature that makes the whole 
world kin rendered Payne's name immortal, its 
author, however, never again wrote or did anything 
memorable. He returned to America, and in 1843 he 
was appointed consul at Tunis, where in 1852, "an 
exile from home," he died. Thirty years later his 
remains were brought back to his native land, and laid 
finally in Oak Hill Cemetery, near Washington. 

The Boston in which Channing began his labors and 
in whose streets Payne romped with his boy comrades 
contained less than twenty thousand inhabitants. Its 
shaded streets were lined with homes set in spacious 
grounds, — " garden-houses " such as lingered in Lon- 
don as late as Milton's time, — and cows grazed where 
now the dwellings of a dense population crowd one 
another for room. Yet the Boston of a century ago 
was a pleasant place to live in, and it counted among 
its citizens a number of men of unusual pith and vigor. 
One of these was Josiah Quincy, then in the morning 
of a career as orator, legislator and man of affairs 
which was to make him leader of the Federalists in the 

143 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

popular branch of Congress, mayor of Boston and one 
of the greatest of the presidents of Harvard. Quincy 
was born in the part of Washington Street then known 
as Marlborough Street, not far from the present Ord- 
way Place and from the Old Province House celebrated 
by Hawthorne. The home of his early manhood, 
however, was in Pearl Street, on the slope of one of the 
three hills which gave to Boston its second title of Tri- 
mountain, and there, in a roomy house shaded by giant 
elm trees, he often gave welcome to Joseph Dennie, 
friend and comrade of his college days. 

Dennie 's name and labors have not escaped the 
oblivion which is so swift to swallow up American 
reputations, but time was when he was the most popu- 
lar of New World authors. Born in 1768, he first 
attained eminence by a series of essays in the manner 
of Addison, which he published under the title of the 
" Lay Preacher," the hold on popular favor thus secured 
being confirmed by his contributions to a literary 
periodical called the "Portfolio," which he established 
in Philadelphia, and conducted from 1800 until his 
death at the early age of forty-four. A man of abound- 
ing wit and quick at repartee, Dennie was also an ex- 
quisite in dress, if we are to believe the gossipy Buck- 

144 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

ingham, who met him during one of his visits to his old 
college friend. He was garbed, writes Buckingham, 
"in a pea-green coat, wliite vest, nankeen small 
clothes, white silk stockings and shoes fastened with 
silver buckles, which covered half the foot from the 
instep to the toe," while his hair, well loaded with 
pomatum in front, was augmented behind by "a large 
queue, which, enrolled in some yards of black ribband, 
reached half way down his back." A singular and 
uncommon figure, but one drawn without malice, 
for Buckingham hastens to add that among his 
familiars Dennie was ever and always a delightful and 
fascinating companion. 

The home of Quincy for a dozen years after he re- 
tired from the presidency of Harvard was in Beacon 
Hill Place, at the corner of Bowdoin Street and on the 
precise spot where once stood "the beacon and loud 
babbling guns" described by Josselyn; but this he 
exchanged, in 1857, for the house numbered 4 Park 
Street, facing the Common and the sunset, which he 
occupied during the rest of liis life. This dwelling is 
yet standing, and has been for many years the home 
of the "Atlantic Monthly" and of the most eminent 
and honored of Boston publishing houses, thus retain- 

145 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

ing, though in a less intimate and more practical way, 
its early association with thought and letters. 

Quincy was first elected to Congress in 1804 and the 
same year Daniel Webster, then a tall, serious-faced 
stripling of twenty-two, came to Boston to study law 
in the oflGice of Christopher Gore, teaching the while 
in the school conducted by his brother in Kingston 
Street. Webster was admitted to the bar in 1805, and 
began the practice of law first at Boscawen and later in 
Portsmouth, but in 1816 he returned to Boston, of 
which for upward of thirty years he was easily the fore- 
most citizen, made so by his massive and imposing 
gifts of mind and body, and a capacity for persuading 
and eloquent argument unrivaled since the time of 
Edmund Burke. Though Boston cherishes the mem- 
ory of the man upon whom it bestowed so many honors, 
the years have spared few visible reminders of his career, 
and one searches in vain for Webster's first Boston 
home in what is now Mt. Vernon Street. He dwelt 
afterward at 37 Somerset Street, and also at the corner 
of High and Summer Streets, then the most beautiful 
residential section of the city; but the court house of 
Suffolk county now covers the site of the Somerset 
Street house, while that of the one in Summer Street, 

146 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

where, in 1825, welcome was given to Lafayette, is 
occupied by an iron front business structure. 

The year before Webster returned to Boston to be- 
come in brief space the leader of its bar, Edward 
Everett was chosen professor of Greek in Harvard, 
and went abroad to fit himself for his new duties. 
Though then only twenty-one years of age, Everett had 
already served for a time as pastor of the famous 
Brattle Street Church, succeeding the eloquent Buck- 
minster, and in other ways had given promise of the 
brilliant and many-sided career that lay before him. 
A twelvemonth after his return from Europe, in 1819, 
he became editor of the "North American Review," 
the most influential and widely read periodical of that 
time, and in 1825 he began ten years of service in the 
popular branch of Congress. After that he was re- 
peatedly chosen governor of Massachusetts, and for 
four years following 1841 he represented his country at 
the court of St. James. He returned from England to 
become president of Harvard, and in 1852 succeeded 
Webster as secretary of state, a little later rounding 
out his public career with a brief period of service in 
the federal Senate. 

Everett for half a life-time ranked after Webster as 
147 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



the greatest of New England orators. But unlike that 
of Webster, Everett's eloquence, though consummate 
of its kind, smelt always of the lamp. His speeches 
delighted but rarely moved his auditors, and in printed 
form, despite the patient art revealed in their polished 
sentences, they find an ever narrowing circle of readers. 
Everett was born in a house which stood until a few 
years ago in the section of Dorchester known of old as 
Five Corners but now as Edward Everett Square; and 
during his youth and early manhood he lived with his 
widowed mother in Washington Street, near to but 
across the way from the head of Essex Street. His 
home, for many years before liis death in 1865, was a 
stately dwelling which stood until a recent period in 
Summer Street nearly opposite Chauncy Street. 

Another orator whom Bostonians delighted to honor 
in the first half of the last century was Rufus Choate, 
styled by Winthrop " the most eloquent of our jurists, 
and the greatest jurist of our orators." Born in 1799 
and admitted to the bar at the age of twenty-five, 
Choate practiced for ten years in Danvers and Salem, 
durinty which time he served a term in Congress as 
member from the Essex district, but in 1834 he removed 
to Boston, where he made his home during the quarter 

U8 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 



century of life that remained to him. When Webster 
retired from the Senate in 1841 to become secretary 
of state under Harrison, Choate was elected to the 
vacant seat, which he filled for four years. He never 
again, however, held federal office, and his last years 
were wholly devoted to the practice of his profession. 
Thus the memory of him that endures is that of the 
greatest forensic orato of his time. Nature had en- 
dowed him with a voice indescribably sweet and musi- 
cal, a sparkling wit and lively fancy, and a brilliant and 
powerful intellect which he developed by exact and 
laborious study continued to his latest hour. No man 
could play more deftly on all the varied chords of hu- 
man nature, and no man knew better how to win a 
reluctant or stubborn jury to his cause. There were, 
indeed, but two forces which he feared in the court- 
room — Webster as opposing counsel and a woman 
witness hostile to his client. "Never cross-examine 
a woman," said he to a younger lawyer a short time 
before his death. " It is of no use. They cannot dis- 
integrate the story they have once told; they cannot 
eliminate the part that is for you from that which is 
against you. They can neither combine, nor shade, nor 
qualify. They go for the whole thing, and the moment 

149 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

you begin to cross-examine one of them, instead of 
being bitten by a single rattlesnake, you are bitten by a 
whole barrelful. I never, except in a case absolutely 
desperate, dared to cross-examine a woman." 

Choate long had his office at 4 Court Street, in a 
granite structure which formerly occupied the site of 
the present Sears building, and which numbered Horace 
Mann among its other tenants. His home for many 
years was a house in Winthrop Place, whose site is now 
covered by a more modern building. Books crowded 
the walls of its every room, and the real world of the 
great lawyer was the one they made for him. "His 
realizing imagination," writes a friend, "instantly nulli- 
fied the hard conditions of time; and often, while he 
was striding around Boston Common in the age of 
Buchanan, he was really making himself a contem- 
porary of the age of Pericles — attending, perhaps, the 
performance of a tragedy of Sophocles or a comedy of 
Aristophanes, or chaffing with Socrates in some Athe- 
nian mechanic's shop. If I ever crossed him in his 
walks, and saw the weird eyes gazing into distant time 
and space, I made it a point of honor not to interrupt 
his meditations, but to pass on with a simple bow of 

recognition. Why should I, for the sake of five minutes' 

150 



A DAY OF LITERARY B E (J I N N I X G S 

delightful conversation, interrupt this hard-worked man 
of genius in his glorious communion with the great of 
old ? The temptation was strong, but I always over- 
came it. When he was in Boston, I ventured to accost 
him; when he was in Athens, I very properly considered 
he was in much better company than any which Boston 
could afford; and, as an humble denizen of the place, I 
thought it judicious not to intrude myself into a select 
circle of immortals to which I was not invited." 

There were few men whose society Choate preferred 
to that of the silent comrades of his library. One of 
these was Francis Lieber, by whose settlement in Boston 
in 1827 a profound scholar and a most substantial pub- 
lic counselor was lost to Europe and gained by Amer- 
ica. Born in Berlin in 1800, the youth of Lieber was 
passed in the turmoil that followed Napoleon's on- 
slaught on Prussia, and he imbibed as a child the in- 
tense hatred of tyranny and despotism, and the pas- 
sionate faith in personal and political liberty which 
were ever afterward the mainsprings of his life. Water- 
loo was followed by a period of political reaction in 
Germany and Lieber, who sang and talked too much 
of freedom, was imprisoned, forbidden to study in the 
universities, and finally compelled to flee his native 

151 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

land. During the next ten years he was a wandering 
refugee in Greece, in Rome and in London, whence at 
the age of twenty-seven he sailed for America. He was 
for a time a teacher of gymnastics in Boston, but soon 
proposed and found a publisher for the " Encyclopedia 
Americana," which he edited, largely wrote, and car- 
ried to a success which long made it the most author- 
itative American work of reference. This task ended, 
another opportunity opened to him in his election to 
the chair of political history and economics in the South 
Carolina State College at Columbia, a position which 
he filled for twenty years, and which gave him, though 
regarded by him as an intellectual exile, leisure and 
opportunity to write the great books dealing with politi- 
cal subjects which brought him enduring fame. 

One of Lieber's colaborers on the " Encyclopedia 
Americana" was George Ticknor, then and for many 
years thereafter a distinguished figure in the world of 
thought and letters. The only child of a well-to-do 
father, Ticknor was one of those fortunate men who 
do not need to turn their attention to other than con- 
genial tasks. Born in Boston in 1701, he studied for 
and was duly admitted to the bar, but abandoned prac- 
tice at the end of a year for the pursuit of letters. The 

152 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

four years following 1815 he devoted to European study 
and travel, and while yet abroad was called to the newly 
created chair of French and Spanish languages at Har- 
vard. He retired from this post in 1835, and in 1840, 
after a second sojourn in Europe, began the history of 
Spanish literature for which he had been making ready 
from early manhood. The first edition of this scholarly 
tliree-volumed book, written, as Hawthorne puts it, 
" not for bread, nor with an uneasy desire of fame, but 
only with a purpose to achieve something true and en- 
during," was published in 1849, but its revision, amend- 
ment and elaboration occupied the author until the 
close of his life. A less known though not less useful 
task of his last years was the active part he played in 
founding the Boston Public Library, to which he be- 
queathed his rich collection of Spanish and Portuguese 
books. Ticknor's birthplace was an elm-shaded house 
in Essex Street which long ago gave way to a business 
block. His home from 1830 until his death in 1871 
was a house which yet stands at 9 Park Street, facing 
the Common, but only as a remnant of the stately man- 
sion of an earlier time. 

The most important of Ticknor's minor literary pro- 
ductions was his life of William H. Prescott, written in 

153 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

his old age. The two men were friends and intellectual 
comrades from boyhood, and the younger thus found 
in the elder a sympathetic as well as competent biog- 
rapher. It was meet that this should be so, for the story 
of Prescott's life is one of the most heroic in our litera- 
ture. Fortunately born and bred, he was in his junior 
year at Harvard when he lost the use of the left eye and 
the free use of his right eye, from a blow inflicted by a 
piece of bread thrown at hazard in a students' frolic. 
This handicap, however, did not swerve him from a 
resolution to pursue a literary career, and, though much 
of his research and composition had to be done by 
secretaries, his " Ferdinand and Isabella," published 
in 1837, when its author was forty-one years of age, 
won him instant recognition as a brilliant and scholarly 
historian. And the success thus achieved was splen- 
didly confirmed by his " Conquest of Mexico," his 
" Conquest of Peru " and his " Philip II," the last named 
published in 1858, a year before his death. 

Prescott's home during the most fruitful period of 
his career was in Bedford Street, not far from Chauncy, 
in what is now a wholesale business section. There 
his literary work began, and there fame found him. 
There, too, were first displayed the crossed swords, 

151- 



A DAY OF LI r E R A R Y B E G I N N 1 N G S 

borne by the grandfathers of the historian and his wife 
on either side at Bunker Hill, to which Thackeray makes 
gracious allusion in the opening lines of "The Vir- 
ginians." Prescott lived during his last years at 55 
Beacon Street — a double swell front house of brick, 
with pillared porch, in whose outward appearance time 
has wrought little change. His tomb is beneath St. 
Paul's Church in Tremont Street. 

There was but one playhouse in the Boston of a 
century ago. This was a modest brick structure, 
which, erected in 1794, stood for nearly sixty years at 
the northeast corner of Franklin and Federal Streets. 
There Kean and Macready performed for the first time 
in Boston, and there Susanna Row^son proved her 
quality as an actress before she left the stage to become 
an author and to set the maids of her time aweeping 
with the sorrows of " Charlotte Temple." John Howard 
Payne also acted at the Boston Theatre, and at the 
close of his engagement, so runs the quaint announce- 
ment in " The Columbian Centinel " of April 19, 1809, 
" consented to play one night longer " for the benefit of 
a needy fellow player, whereby hangs a tale which 
gives the vanished playhouse an abiding place in our 
literary annals. Three years before David Poe, a 

155 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

handsome, dashing young fellow, sprung from an ex- 
cellent Baltimore family, had run away from home, 
and had married, against the wishes of his people, an 
actress of bewitching face and figure, Elizabeth Arnold 
by name. The husband adopted his wife's calling, and, 
drifting from city to city, they in due time secured an 
engagement in Boston. It was while the Poes were 
playing that engagement that on February 19, 1809, a 
baby boy was born to the twain who was called Edgar, 
and it was for the mother's benefit that three months 
afterward Master Payne generously consented to 
lengthen his engagement by a single night. 

The Poes soon slipped away from Boston for en- 
gagements in other cities, and in Richmond less than 
three years later the life of the mother came to an end. 
The father had already quitted the scene, and the boy 
Edgar was adopted by the childless wife of a wealthy 
Richmond merchant named Allan. Poe's biographers 
tell with varying detail the story of the next sixteen 
years, but all of them agree that in 1827 the youthful 
poet, having quarreled with his foster father, set forth 
from Richmond to seek his fortunes in the world, only 
to speedily find himself in poverty in Boston. He saw 
fit for the time being to assume another name, and it 

15G 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

was as Edgar A. Perry that, soon after his arrival in 
Boston, he induced Calvin Thomas, an obscure printer 
with a shop at what was then 70 Washington Street, 
to publish for liim a little volume to which he gave the 
title, "Tamerlane, and Other Poems, by a Bostonian." 
One of the three known existing copies of this book has 
sold in recent years for more money than was ever 
earned by its author in any twelve month of his career. 

It brought Poe at the moment, however, notliing 
but disappointment, and in the summer of the follow- 
ing year as a private in the United States army, in 
which he had enlisted the while under his assumed 
name, he took a second leave of his native city. He 
never returned to dwell there, and he seldom referred 
to Boston in later years save with the bitterness of hate. 
Yet he often visited it after he had won fame as a poet 
and story-teller, coming for the last time in Mjjy, 1849, 
a few months before his death in Baltimore under cir- 
cumstances which patient inquiry has never cleared of 
contradiction and mystery. 

The same year in which Poe's "Tamerlane" found 
its way into print the first collected edition of the poems 
of the elder Richard Henry Dana issued from a Boston 
press. Dana, however, was then more than twice the 

157 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

age of his fellow poet. Sprung from a race of lawyers, 
he first studied law, and in 1811, at the age of twenty- 
four, was admitted to the bar; but he followed his pro- 
fession for a few years only, and before 1818 quitted it 
for a connection with literature which began with criti- 
cal contributions to the "North American Review." 
He worked for three years for the " Review," and then 
established the "Idle Man," a work in the style of 
Irving's "Sketch Book," though of added vigor of 
thought and strength of style. Bryant and AUston 
contributed to the " Idle Man," but for one reason or 
another it found few readers and fewer purchasers. 
Warned by his publisher that he was running himself 
into debt, the author abandoned it when seven numbers 
had been published, and with it the sustained use of 
his pen for print, limiting himself thereafter to the 
occasional writing of critical papers. 

Dana's best work for the "Idle Man," along with 
the "Buccaneer" and other poems, was collected in 
a thin volume, published, as already stated, in 1827, 
and six years later reissued with additions. The last 
collection of his works, which included some reviews, 
was made in 1850, in two volumes, and has been long 
out of print. The author, indeed, was almost forgotten 

158 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

full a quarter of a century before he died in 1879, at the 
ripe age of ninety-one. Yet both pleasure and profit 
are to be had from the earnest, honest and meaty pages 
of this pioneer of our literature. His prose is in the 
vein and manner of the best English essayists of the 
eighteenth century, and if in his verse he too often 
moves like one who is shackled by his measures he has 
always something to say and his own way of saying it. 
Dana, moreover, was one of the first in America to 
recognize and proclaim the merits of Wordsworth, 
Coleridge and Bryant, — this in the face of the angry 
dissent of men who were wedded to an earlier and more 
artificial school, — and it is due in no small part to his 
labors as an evangel that the poetic gospel which they 
preached has become the common property of a later 
generation. It is not as poet or critic but as the prophet 
of a new day that he will be held longest in memory. 
The home of the author of the "Buccaneer" from 
1834 until his death was at 43 Chestnut Street. 

Dana while still a student of the law was one of a 
dozen young men who made up the Anthology Club, 
organized in 1805 for the pursuit and advancement of 
letters. These aims were accomplished by frequent 
meetings of the members and by the conduct of a 

159 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTER^S 

periodical called the "Monthly Anthology," whose 
six octavo volumes, to quote Quincy, constitute "one 
of the most lasting and honorable monuments of the 
taste and literature of the period." Though the his- 
torian of a later time, fresh from a reading of their 
pages, may question this verdict, the fact remains that 
the "Monthly Anthology" served a worthy purpose 
in a day of literary beginnings and that men of un- 
usual talent were numbered among its contributors. 
One of these was William Tudor, who founded the 
" North American Review " and wrote the greater part 
of its first four volumes; and another was the Reverend 
AVilliam Emerson, who in 1799, when he was thirty 
years of age, had been called to the pastorate of the 
First Church in Boston, 

The parsonage of the First Church, a century ago, 
was a gambrel-roofed wooden building, set in a garden 
and orchard, which faced what is now Summer Street, 
nearly opposite the head of Hawley Street, and in this 
house, on a May day in 1803, Ralph Waldo, the second 
of William Emerson's five sons, was born. The Sum- 
mer Street region, as we know, has long been given 
over to trade, but in the childhood of the younger 
Emerson it was still "a boy's paradise, and echoed 

160 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

every holiday afternoon and mid-day recess with 
'Coram' and *Hy-Spy'; having just the right admix- 
ture of open ground, fences and thoroughfares, with 
intricacies and lurking-places of sheds and wood- 
houses, and here and there a deserted barn, with open 
doors and a remnant of hay untouched. There was 
even a pond, where a beginner might try his first skates; 
and the salt water close by, with wharves, where he 
might catch flounders and tom-cod." But the boy 
Emerson knew none of these things after his twelfth 
year. The father died in 1811, and a little later the 
widowed mother removed to a house in Beacon Street, 
whose site adjoined that of the present Athenaeum 
Building. This home, like the earlier one, set back 
from the street, and in the yard was room enough for 
a cow, which Dr. Ripley sent down from Concord, and 
which Emerson and his brother Charles daily drove 
round the Common to a pasture in Carver Street. 

Boston preserves few visible reminders of Emerson's 
later years. Franklin Park in the Roxbury district 
covers the site of the farm-house in which he lived 
with his mother and brothers after leaving Harvard; 
and a business structure long ago replaced the Second 
Church at the corner of Hanover and Richmond Streets, 

161 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

of which he was pastor from 1829 to 1832, and whose 
descendant is an ivy-clad church on Copley Square. 
Time has also taken the house in Chardon Street to 
which in the autumn of 1829 he brought his bride. A 
year after he retired from the pulpit of the Second 
Church he made his first trip to Europe. When he 
returned to America it was to enter upon his long resi- 
dence at Concord, and thereafter Boston knew him 
only as an occasional sojourner within its gates. 

The visitor to the site of the Second Church in Han- 
over Street finds himself within a kite-string's distance 
of Garden Court Street, where until 1834 stood the 
birthplace and home of Thomas Hutchinson, the last 
royal governor of Massachusetts. This section of the 
city is now given over to Boston's Italian colony, but 
time was when it was the court end of the town, and 
boasted a score of stately mansions. Among these 
none was more stately than the Hutchinson house, 
built in 1710 and set in ample grounds. The history 
of house and master, however, was a troubled one. 
Hutchinson, a man of learning and ability, served his 
native colony as member of the council and as chief 
justice of the supreme court, but his course as governor 
during the stormy years ^^ Inch preceded the Revolution 

1()2 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

proved him a staunch supporter of the royaHst cause, 
and also won for him the lasting ill-will of his fellows. 
An anti-Stamp act mob attacked and sacked his man- 
sion on the night of August 26, 1765, and he and his 
family only escaped its vengeance by finding refuge 
in the house of a neighbor. On the eve of the final 
breach between crown and colonies Hutchinson de- 
parted for England, never to return. His property 
was soon after confiscated by the patriots, and, though 
the British government gave him a pension and reim- 
bursed him for his pecuniary losses, he died before the 
war's end, tradition has it, of a broken heart. 

It was in the mansion in Garden Court Street that 
Hutchinson wrote the " History of the Colony of Massa- 
chusetts Bay" which entitles liim to a place in these 
pages. The first volume was published in 1764; and 
when the house was pillaged in the following year 
the manuscript of the second volume lay in the library 
almost ready for the press. The mob threw it into the 
street, where, with other precious books and papers, 
it was *°left lying for several hours in a soaking rain"; 
but by rare good fortune all but a few sheets were 
collected and saved by the Reverend Andrew Eliot, 
who lived near by in Hanover Street, and later the 

163 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

author was enabled to transcribe the whole and pub- 
lish it. Thus was posterity spared a grievous loss, 
for Hutchinson's volumes, the third and last of which 
was not published until nearly fifty years after his 
death, are easily, both in form and substance, the most 
engaging historical work by a native hand that has 
come down to us from the colonial period. One reads 
and returns to them with ever deepening regret that 
fate should have placed so able a man on the wrong 
side of a great cause. 

When Emerson preached his first sermons in the 
Second Church, Amos Bronson Alcott, his close friend 
in after years, was master of a boy's school in Salem 
Street in the same quarter of the town. After settling 
in Concord, Emerson delivered courses of lectures in 
Boston during several successive winters. Many of 
these lectures were given in the Masonic Temple, which 
stands as of old at the corner of Tremont Street and 
Temple Place, though long since reconstructed for 
business purposes; and it was in the same building that 
in 1834 Alcott set afoot the school which gave him im- 
mediate and unique fame as an educator. Alcott's 
system as a teacher was to appeal to the pupil's con- 
ceptions, calling his powers into exercise instead of 

1G4 



A DAY OF LITERARY B E G I x\ N 1 N G S 

making liim a mere passive recipient of knowledge; 
and in this respect he was a pioneer in a field now fiUed 
by an army of successful instructors. The product o! 
the Masonic Temple school, however, which attracted 
most attention at the time was a book edited by Alcott 
and entitled " Conversations with Children on the 
Gospels." This little volume made it evident that 
the author had wandered far from the accepted religious 
ideas of the period. It also made Alcott the best 
abused man of the hour, and, with the admission of 
a colored child as a pupil, led to the downfall of the 
school. 

Alcott next came into notice as the founder of Fruit- 
lands, a little settlement near Concord established to 
carry out his ideas of social reform. But Fruitlands, 
as has been told in another place, speedily collapsed, 
and, following a brief residence in Concord, the Alcotts 
returned to Boston, where the wife opened an intelli- 
gence office, while the husband began the " Conversa- 
tions" which, if barren of pecuniary results, furnished 
a welcome means of escape from sordid cares into the 
speculative regions which he loved. They lived at 
this time at 20 Pinckney Street, and the diary of Louisa 
May Alcott lifts the curtain on more than one touching 

165 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



incident in the history of a home the idealism of whose 
master rarely mated with common sense. 

It was the winter of 1851, and Alcott was returning 
from the West where he had gone to try his luck. " A 
dramatic scene," writes his daughter, "when he arrived 
in the night. We were waked by hearing the bell. 
Mother flew down, crying 'My husband!' We rushed 
after, and five white figures embraced the half-frozen 
wanderer who came in hungry, tired, cold and dis- 
appointed, but smiling bravely and as serene as ever. 
We fed and warmed and brooded over him, longing 
to ask if he had made any money, but not one did until 
little May said, after he had told all the pleasant things, 
' Well, did people pay you ? ' Then with a queer look 
he opened his pocketbook and showed one dollar, say- 
ing with a smile that made our eyes fill, ' Only that ! 
My overcoat was stolen, and I had to buy a shawl. 
Many promises were not kept, and traveling is costly, 
but I have opened the way, and another year shall do 
better.' I shall never forget how beautifully mother 
answered him, though the dear, hopeful soul had built 
much on his success; but with a beaming face she kissed 
him, saying, 'I call that doing very well. Since you 
are safely home, dear, we don't ask anything more.' 

IGG 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

Anna and I choked down our tears and took a little 
lesson in real love which we never forsrot." 

It is needless to repeat the familiar story of how the 
Alcotts a little later again left Boston for Concord, or 
of how, through the labors of Louisa May Alcott, they 
were finally freed from the pinch of poverty. Alcott, 
surviving his wife by nearly a dozen years, passed his 
last days in Boston in the home which his devoted 
daughter made for him at 10 Louisburg Square, and 
there he died in 1888 at the age of eighty-eight. Louisa 
May Alcott's own death, as we know, occurred on the 
day of her father's funeral. 

Alcott first appeared in Boston in 1828; and in the 
same year "VMiittier came to the city from his father's 
farm to assume the editorship of "The American 
Manufacturer," a pohtical journal devoted to the for- 
tunes of Henry Clay, which post had been procured for 
him by his friend Garrison. The publisher of the 
"Manufacturer" was William Collier, a Baptist 
preacher turned printer, and Whittier, "a shy, timid 
recluse," as he wrote in after years, " afraid of a shadow, 
especially the shadow of a woman," became a member 
of his employer's household at 30 Federal Street. 
The verse which he wrote for the "Manufacturer" 

167 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



was widely copied and gave him a constantly increasing 
reputation as a poet, but the effort which cost him the 
most thought and labor never found its way into print. 
ColUer also published a monthly magazine, the " Bap- 
tist Preacher," and it was his wont to travel through 
the State soliciting subscribers for it, while his son re- 
mained in charge of the office. Each number of the 
magazine contained a sermon by some eminent Baptist 
divine; but on one occasion, when the old clergyman 
was away, — I repeat the story as Pickard tells it, — 
no sermon was left for copy, and, the " Preacher's " day 
of publication drawing perilously near, the younger 
Collier proposed to Whittier to write a sermon in place 
of the one that had failed to arrive. Whereupon 
^Vhittier, "confident that he could do anything, 
from the writing of a sermon to the conducting 
of a political campaign, readily undertook, with 
young Collier's assistance, to fill the space set apart 
for the great divines of that day. What he had 
written — it was a serious essay and no burlesque 
— was partly in type when the elder Collier re- 
turned, and a discourse under which a congregation 
had actually slept took the place of the young poet's 

first and only sermon." 

168 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

Whittier's editorship of the "Manufacturer" ended 
in August, 1829, when he was called back to Haverhill 
by the failing health of his father and the necessity of 
caring for the farm. He never again resided in Boston, 
but in many of its homes he was ever a welcome and 
honored guest. During his last years there were two 
homes, in one of which he was sure to be found if by any 
Boston hearth. One was the home of Mrs. James T. 
Fields in Charles Street, and the other that of Mrs. 
William Claflin in Mount Vernon Street. Lydia Maria 
Child was for many years one of Whittier's most in- 
timate personal friends, their friendship, begun in the 
earliest days of the anti-slavery struggle, lasting until 
the end of their lives. It was Mrs. Child's custom in 
old age to leave her cottage at Wayland every winter 
and spend a few months in Boston. Whenever Whit- 
tier also chanced to be in the city he hastened to seek 
her out, and their meetings were always rare feasts of 
the soul, not to be forgotten by those whose fortune it 
was to witness them. " It was good to see Mrs. Child," 
his hostess remarked to Whittier after one of these in- 
terviews. "Yes," said the poet, a look of mingled 
humor and tenderness stealing into his face, "Liddy's 
bunnets aren't always in the fashion," — as a matter 

109 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



of fact they were ever hopelessly out of it, — " but we 
don't like her any the worse for that." 

Another poet friend of Mrs. Child's early woman- 
hood, if not of her old age, was Nathaniel Parker WilHs, 
who, a few months before Whittier retired from the 
editorship of the " Manufacturer," estabhshed in Boston 
a short-lived magazine which he called the " American 
Monthly." Born in Portland, in 1807, Willis passed 
his later boyhood in Boston, where his pious Presby- 
terian father founded two religious periodicals, the 
"Recorder" and the "Youth's Companion," both of 
which still flourish, the latter to the delight of myriads 
of young folk happily ignorant of its rigidly orthodox 
paternity. Wilhs while still in his early teens contri- 
buted verse to his father's " Recorder " which brought 
him a budding reputation. When sent to Yale to re- 
ceive a collegiate training under the Calvinistic in- 
fluences so dear to the heart of the elder Willis he found 
time, in the intervals of studies never too engrossing, 
to write other poems dealing with scriptural subjects 
which, by reason of their picturesque and mellifluous 
(jualities, were speedily copied into half of the promi- 
nent journals of the land. And so it was that when 
graduated from Yale in 1827 he drifted naturally and 

170 



A DAY OF LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

easily into the career of mingled journalism and letters 
which ended only with his death. 

Contributions to the "Recorder" followed Willis's 
return to Boston; then he wrote for and helped to edit 
some of the showy Annuals so popular in an earlier 
time and now so completely forgotten; and in 1829, as 
has been noted, put his fortunes to the test in the 
"American Monthly." There was much good read- 
ing in the newcomer: Richard Hildreth, Park Benja- 
min and George Lunt contributed to it, and in its pages 
Willis himself developed the easy, nimble, half flippant 
and wholly enjoyable prose style that ever after dis- 
tinguished him. But its editor, gifted with physical 
beauty and grace, aspired also to be a dandy and man 
of the town, and with such success that Holmes could 
long afterward recall him as being in early manhood 
" something between a remembrance of Count d'Orsay 
and an anticipation of Oscar Wilde." The tastes of a 
social exquisite, alas, were coupled in his case with a 
scanty and uncertain income; and this ill-advised union 
bore the usual fruit. The "American Monthly," 
started without capital or experience, went down in 
August, 1831, under a load of debt, and its jaunty 
editor betook himself to New York to write a new and 
happier chapter in his history. 

171 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Willis while a resident of Boston lived with his parents 
at 31 Atkinson Street, now a part of Congress. The 
house is gone, and but one surviving landmark of older 
Boston has direct association with him. To King's 
Chapel, at the corner of Tremont and School Streets, 
they brought him dead on a clouded afternoon in the 
winter of 18G7; and there, before the waiting grave in 
Mount Auburn received him, those who had loved the 
living man for his kindly and generous nature paid 
tender and sorrowing tribute to his memory. " It is 
comfortable," said Thackeray, " that there should have 
been a Wilhs." 



172 



Chapter VII 
The Autocrat and His Comrades 

Channixg was nearing the end of his great career; 
Emerson had been six years settled in Concord, and 
Hawthorne had lately issued from his long hermitage 
at Salem, when in 1840 OHver Wendell Holmes, fol- 
lowing a short professorship at Dartmouth, took up 
his permanent residence in Boston and began the 
labors as doctor, poet and essayist which have now 
become one of the cherished traditions of his adopted 
city. Dr. Holmes married soon after he settled in 
Boston, and for eighteen years following 1841 he had 
his home in a house long gone from what was then 
Montgomery Place but is now Bosworth Street, a quiet 
thoroughfare which gives access at one end to a narrow 
and more ancient cross street, and leads at the other 
end to the old Granary Burying Ground where the 
victims of the Boston Massacre take their rest. 

Dr. Holmes was still living at 8 Montgomery Place 
when the "Atlantic Monthly" was started in 1857, 
and he, after giving it a name, became one of its con- 

173 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

tributors. Sitting down to write his first article for 
it he recalled that twenty odd years before he had 
begun for a lesser magazine, long dead and forgotten, 
a series of papers entitled " The Autocrat at the Break- 
fast Table," and he decided now to resume that un- 
completed work. He did so, and the papers born of 
this decision not only insured the success of the new 
magazine, but also fixed the reputation of their author 
as an essayist without an equal in the lighter vein. 
The Autocrat series was mainly written in Montgomery 
Place, along with " The Chambered Nautilus " and 
other of the familiar poems so deftly woven into the 
warp and woof of their maker's delightful prose. Here, 
too, all of his children were born, as a well remembered 
passage recounting one of the Professor's walks with 
the Schoolmistress bears witness. "The Professor," 
he tells his companion, "lived in that house a long 
time, — not twenty years, but pretty near it. When 
he entered that door two shadows glided over the 
threshold; five lingered in the doonvay when he passed 
through it for the last time . . . What changes he 
saw in that quiet place. Death rained through every 
roof but his; children came into life, grew into maturity, 
wedded, faded away, threw themselves away ; the whole 

174 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 

drama of life was played in that stock company's 
theatre of a dozen houses, one of which was his, and 
no deep sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his 
dwelling. Peace be to those walls forever, — the Pro- 
fessor said, — for the many pleasant years he has 
passed within them." 

These came to an end in 1859, when Doctor Holmes 
removed to a house which yet stands at 164 Charles 
Street. The rear windows of the new home, which 
has been much changed in recent years, then com- 
manded a fine view of the broad expanse of Charles 
River, and of the lovely region beyond; and here at 
the end of the garden were kept the boats held in 
piquant memory by readers of "The Autocrat." The 
twelve years Doctor Holmes resided in Charles Street 
were occupied in meeting the demands made upon hini 
by lecture bureaus, and by his labors as professor of 
anatomy in the Harvard Medical School, which post 
he filled from 1847 to 1882. Yet he also found time 
during this period to write "The Professor at the 
Breakfast Table," graver perhaps but no less delightful 
than its forerunner; his two novels, " Elsie Venner " and 
"The Guardian Angel"; his splendid lyrics of the 
Civil War time, and that masterpiece in the little, 

175 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



"My Hunt After the Captain," which tells of his 
successful search for the soldier-son, who, wounded at 
Ball's Bluff, lived to fight again, and to become an 
honored member of his country's highest court. 

In 1871 Dr. Holmes removed to the plain but roomy 
brick house, 296 Beacon Street, where he resided until 
his death. The back windows of his study in this 
house look out upon the same expanse of Charles 
River of which mention has been made, and he never 
wearied of pointing out its beauties to visitors, beauties 
which he charmingly depicted in the poem "My 
Aviary," and which often moved him to soberer thoughts. 
William Winter, who was his companion at the time, 
relates how, on one bright day, the veteran, standing 
at his study window, said, as he touched one of the 
panes: "Through this I can see Cambridge, where I 
was born; Harvard, where I was educated; and Mount 
Auburn, where I shall rest. There are few men," he 
added, after a pause, "who can see so much of their 
lives at a single glance, and through one window-pane." 
In Beacon Street Doctor Holmes w^rote, besides his 
later verse, "The Poet at the Breakfast Table," "One 
Hundred Days in Europe," and " Over the Tea-Cups." 
Here, too, old age stole upon him, but so slowly and 

17G 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 

gently that death in its coming was as kind to him as 
Ufe had been. He kept to the last the sparkling fancy, 
the brilliant wit and the sunny humor of his earlier 
years, and with them gave welcome to his friends until 
a few days before the end. He died in his chair, pain- 
lessly and quietly, on an October day in 1894, and rests 
now in Mount Auburn. 

A book of rare charm was lost to us when Doctor 
Holmes failed to write a history of the Saturday Club, 
of which he was an original member and its president 
for many years before his death. The Saturday Club 
sprang from the short-lived Atlantic Club, in which 
the "Atlantic Monthly" also had its origin. It was 
organized in 1857, and among its members during the 
first years of its existence were Longfellow, Emerson, 
Holmes, Whittier, Lowell, Agassiz and Felton. It met, 
and continues to meet, every month at two of the clock, 
on the day its name would indicate, in the mirror-room 
of the Parker House, at Tremont and School Streets; 
and its dinners, which usually lasted until early in the 
evening, were rich in wit and sense and high spirits. 
Every sitter at a board so thickly begirt with wonderful 
men had something to say informally ; the greater lights 
nearly always had something in particular to say; and 

177 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



these gatherings, though they found no Boswell, never 
failed to be " a fine source of cheer and mental stimulus 
to men who knew how to use conviviality with wisdom, 
getting the good out of it, and none of the harm." 

James T. Fields and Edwin P. Whipple should also 
have been mentioned as members of the Saturday Club. 
Fields at the age of fourteen came from his native 
Portsmouth to Boston, where a friend had found a 
place for him as a boy of all work in the Old Corner 
Bookstore at School and Washington Streets. He was 
promoted ere long to a clerkship, and at the age of 
twenty-three became a partner in the publishing firm 
of which for more than thirty years he was the guiding 
spirit. Fields added to a keen sense of literary values 
a gift for friendship that amounted to genius. No 
publisher of his generation enjoyed the confidence and 
hearty good will of so wide and varied a circle of 
authors, and until his retirement from business in 1870 
his sanctum in the Old Corner Bookstore was a favorite 
lounge for all that group of brilliant men who made the 
literary Boston of two score years ago. "That cur- 
tained corner," writes George William Curtis, "is re- 
membered by those who knew it in its great days, as 
Beaumont recalled the revels at the immortal tavern. 

178 



THE AUTOCRAT A\D HIS COMRADES 

What merry peals! What fun and chaff and story! 
Not only the poet brought his poem there still glowing 
from his heart, but the lecturer came from the train 
with his freshest touches of local humor. It was the 
exchange of wit, the Rialto of current good things, the 
hub of the hub." 

The quaint little red brick building with sloping roof 
where Fields so cheerily played Destiny to the aspira- 
tions of authors has had a long history. It was built 
in 1712, thus antedating by thirty years the erection 
of the original Faneuil Hall, and before it became a 
bookstore in 1828 had for a tenant Dr. Samuel Clarke, 
father of James Freeman Clarke. In a yet earlier time 
its site was owned and occupied by Anne Hutchinson, 
who as leader of the sect called Antinomians filled a 
large place in the Boston of her day. A woman cursed, 
as Eggleston puts it, with a natural gift for leadership 
in an age that had no place for such women, both 
Cotton and Winthrop fell under her spell for a time, but 
the latter soon became her vindictive enemy, and in 
1638 she was banished from the colony. Her after 
liistory was a pathetic and tragic one. Her banishment 
led her first to Rhode Island, where her husband died, 
and then to Long Island, whence with her children and 

170 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



a few devoted followers she crossed to and found a 
refuge on the Westchester shore. Her life in the wil- 
derness promised to be a peaceful and happy one; but 
it was a delusive promise. A savage war between the 
Dutch and the Indians was in progress, and the red 
men in their reprisals spared not the innocent and help- 
less. On a September night in 1643 a party of them 
surrounded and fired the Hutchinson cabin. When 
the frightened woman tried to rush out she was driven 
back into the flames. Her eldest son, a lad of twelve, 
escaped only to be burned at the stake; while the little 
sister, whom he had carried from the house, was taken 
by the Indians and lived among them so long that she 
was unwilling to return with the white men who finally 
effected her rescue. 

It is a short walk from the Old Corner Bookstore, 
soon alas to make way for an office building, to 148 
Charles Street, below the western slope of Beacon Hill, 
where Fields long had his home, and where, after he 
had ceased to be a publisher, he wrote his delightful 
"Yesterdays with Authors." Tliis house is now the 
town home of his widow, herself the author of many 
charming books, and of that rare artist, Sarah Orne 
Jewett. Fields resided here from 1857 until his death 

180 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 

in 1881, and had the spacious rooms of the staid old 
mansion the gift of speech they would bear eloquent 
witness to the rare quality of he hospitality here ex- 
tended to the most eminent authors of two worlds, by 
a host who " radiated far and near a lartje and oreneral 
good will." Dickens and Thackeray upon their visits 
to America were at home in this house; and so, when 
in Boston, were Hawthorne, Whittier and Bayard Tay- 
lor. A quaintly furnished bed-chamber above stairs 
has been occupied at various times by these and other 
authors of equal fame; and in the library room, also on 
the second floor and rich in curious old books and 
autograph copies, including the manuscript of "The 
Scarlet Letter," Emerson wrote his "Voluntaries," on 
a morning when he was a guest in the house. He 
penned the poem before breakfast, and after this repast 
asked his host and hostess to come up and hear it. He 
had written on loose sheets of paper, throwing each one 
down as finished, and the floor was carpeted with his 
flying manuscript. Fields assisted him in gathering 
the scattered sheets, and on the reading Mrs. Field 
gave the poem its happy title. 

Fields and Edwin P. Whipple were friends from 
youth to old age. AMiipple, though now, it is to be 

181 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

feared, a fading reputation, deserves nevertheless an 
honored place in the history of American letters. Born, 
as we know, in Gloucester in 1819, he came at the age 
of twenty to Boston, where he found work first in a 
broker's office and then as superintendent of a news 
exchange room. All of his spare hours, however, were 
given to books, and, drifting gradually yet surely into 
a lettered career, the middle years of his life were 
wholly devoted to critical writing and to the lecture 
platform. Nearly a dozen volumes stand credited to 
his name in the library lists, and within their covers is 
to be found much keen and wholesome criticism, if not 
a sure sense of what is beautiful in literature. He was 
quick, also, to discover and note the merits of younger 
men; and it was, indeed, through the catholic qualities 
of his mind and heart that he rendered his best service 
to life and letters. Howells, with this thought in mind, 
happily describes him as a " man to be kept fondly in 
the memory of all who ever knew him." Whipple's 
home for many years before his death in 1886 was a 
modest brick house at 11 Pinckney Street. 

Another long-time resident of the same quiet thor- 
oughfare was George S. Hillard, whose name, like that 
of Whipple, is fast falling into the oblivion which sooner 

18^2 - 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 

or later claims all but the greatest reputations. Born 
in Maine in 1808, Ilillard was for many years the most 
scholarly member of the Boston bar, a graceful speaker 
in demand on all public occasions, and a critic whose 
reviews were of great value in forming the popular 
judgment. His prominence did not last, however; and 
in time to come he will, perhaps, be remembered only 
for the reason that he was the staunch and unfailing 
friend of Hawthorne when the great romancer stood 
most in need of friends. It was Hillard who raised and 
sent to Hawi;horne, sore beset with poverty, the money 
which enabled him to finish "The Scarlet Letter," 
accompanying it with a message so kindly that it 
could not fail to temper what was for the recipient a 
rough and bitter experience. 

The reply it brought from Hawthorne came from the 
depths of his nature. "It is sweet," he wrote, "to be 
remembered and cared for by one's friends. And it is 
bitter, nevertheless, to need their support. Ill success 
in life is really and justly a matter of shame. I am 
ashamed of it, and I ought to be. The fault of a failure 
is attributable — in a great degree, at least — to the 
man who fails. I should apply this truth in judging of 
other men; and it behooves me not to shun its point or 

183 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

edge in taking it home to my own heart. Nobody has 
a right to live in the world unless he be strong and able, 
and applies his ability to good purpose. The money, 
dear Hillard, will smooth my way for a long time to 
come. The only way in which a man can retain his 
self-respect, while availing himself of the generosity of 
his friends, is by making it an incitement to his utmost 
exertion, so that he may not need their help again. I 
shall look upon it so — nor will shun any drudgery that 
my hand shall find to do, if thereby I may win bread." 
Drudgery, however, had no part in the redemption of 
this promise. A few months later "The Scarlet Let- 
ter" was published, and Hawthorne never again had 
need of money aid from his friends. 

Hillard's home from 1848 until a few years before 
his death in 1879 was at 62 Pinckney Street. Before 
that he long occupied the house numbered 54 Pinckney 
Street, and it Avas from the latter, little changed by the 
years, that, on a July day in 1842, Hawthorne dis- 
patched a note to James Freeman Clarke asking the 
kindly churchman to marry him to Sophia Peabody, 
but naming neither place nor day. "Though person- 
ally a stranger to you," he wrote, " I am about to re- 
quest of you the greatest favor whicli I can receive from 

184 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 

any man. I am to be married to ]Miss Sophia Peabody; 
and it is our mutual desire that you should perform the 
ceremony. Unless it should be decidedly a rainy day, 
a carriage will call for you at half-past eleven o'clock in 
the forenoon." There was no postponement on ac- 
count of rain, and the marriage took place on the fol- 
lowing day at the home of the Peabody s, at 13 West 
Street, the site of which is now covered with shops. 
Though the house in West Street is gone, for those 
who seek them Boston holds many reminders of Haw- 
thorne and his career, and of the folk who people the 
world of his dreams. At 362 Washington Street his 
first romance, " Fanshawe," was published in 1828, and 
in an old building still standing on Custom House Street 
he first found government employment as a measurer 
in the revenue service. It was in this old building, 
where he had his desk and made out his daily returns 
of measuring cargoes of coal and salt, — a " darksome 
dungeon," he calls it, " into which dismal region never 
comes any bird of paradise," — that Hawthorne passed 
many dreary and cheerless hours, eating his heart out 
with hope and love deferred, and saving money for the 
home he was striving to win for his waiting bride, only 
to sink the last dollar of it at Brook Farm. Again, the 

18.5 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

visitor to the Old Comer Bookstore has shown him the 
desk at which Hawthorne corrected the proofs of 
"The Scarlet Letter"; and from its windows he can 
look out upon the spot where Fields parted with the 
romancer for the last time, as he started upon the 
journey from which he was never to return. 

The Boston of " The Scarlet Letter " lies deep buried 
under the dust and drift of tlu'ee hundred years, yet it 
is not difficult for the later comer to trace from place to 
place the career of its hapless heroine. The court 
house of Suffolk county covers the site of Hester 
Prynne's prison, the rust on whose iron-bound door 
"looked more antique than anything else in the New 
World," and the old State House that of the market- 
l)lace which was the scene of her pillory. The cottage 
where she underwent her long penance seems to have 
been situated on Back Bay, not far from the Common, 
which alone of Boston landmarks retains almost un- 
changed its original form. Hawthorne tells us that 
the house in which Dimmesdale and Roger Chillin*;- 
worth dwelt stood on the site of King's Chapel, while 
in the burial-ground adjoining this ancient place of 
worship Hester Prynne and her lover lie in their last 
sleep. Many years after Dimmesdale's death, he writes, 

180 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 



" a new grave was delved near an old and sunken one, 
in that burial-ground beside which King's Chapel has 
since been built. It was near that old and sunken 
grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the 
two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tomb- 
stone served for both. All around, there were monu- 
ments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple 
slab of slate there appeared the semblance of an en- 
graved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording 
of which might serve for a motto and brief description 
of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and re- 
lieved only h\ one ever glowing point of light gloomier 
than the shadow : — 

'"On a field sable, the letter A, gules.'" 
Aside from his friendship for Hawthorne, George S. 
Hillard has another indirect claim to remembrance 
in that he was for many years the law partner of Charles 
Sumner. The free spirit of the North had during the 
middle years of the last century no nobler spokesman 
than Sumner, this by reason of the charm of his per- 
sonal presence, the glow of his rhetoric, his persuading 
sincerity and his moral fervor. Born in Boston in 
1811, he was graduated at Harvard, studied law under 
Justice Story, and in 1839 began its practice. During 



187 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

the next ten years he grew steadily into fame, not only 
as an orator, but also as an avowed and resolute enemy 
of slavery, and this led in 1850 to his election to the 
federal Senate. There he was at first refused a place 
on any of the committees, as being "outside of any 
healthy political organization," but his was a light that 
could not be hidden, and as time went on he came to 
exercise a controlling influence on the affairs of the 
Senate which ended only with his death. To war 
against slavery was his special task, but, in the spirit of 
Bacon, he proudly took the whole field of benevolent 
legislation "for his province," and was never silent 
when justice and humanity needed champions. 

Sumner, moreover, was at all times he superior of 
those who sought to suppress freedom of debate. He 
beat them not only in argument, but in sarcasm, in- 
vective and prompt retort. Dull blades were of no 
avail before his keen one. He said neatly what most 
of his antagonists could only say coarsely, and they 
emerged from each fresh encounter vanquished and 
discomfited. "The whole arsenal of God is ours," 
he wrote a friend," and I will not renounce one of the 
weapons — not one." This promise he kept to the 
letter. Again and again, during his career as an orator, 

188 



THE AUTOCRAT AND II IS COMRADES 

he was called upon to exercise courage of the rarest 
order, and never did the bravery in his Avill and heart 
fail to answer to that which was in his brain. The 
Bowdoin School covers the site of Sumner's birthplace. 
His home from 1830 until a few years before his death 
in 1874 was a house still standing at 20 Hancock Street, 
near the foot of Beacon Hill. 

It was in Faneuil Hall in 1845 that Sumner made his 
first speech against slavery. From the same platform 
eighi years earlier Wendell Phillips had pledged Ins 
support to the same cause. Phillips like Sumner was 
Boston born and Harvard bred, and like Sumner he 
was educated for the bar. But unlike Sumner he 
never practiced, and never held office or allied himself 
with a party, choosing instead to stand apart from men 
in order that he might be free to strike them if he 
thought they deserved blows. Born in 1811, Phillips 
made his first speech against slavery at the age of 
twenty-six, and from that time until the Civil War his 
hand held highest the torch that lighted the flames of 
that dire but inevitable conflict. He, indeed, more 
than any other man was the great orator of emancipa- 
tion. " Men would go to hear him," writes Joel Ben- 
ton, " who loathed his logic and his purpose, but who 

189 



NEW E NGLAND IN LETTERS 

came away captivated by his entrancement. It was a 
study to see him mount the platform. His opening 
sentences were spoken in low tones; they were simple 
and without ornament. It was as if he had begun 
a quiet conversation. Presently, however, his voice 
Avould grow louder; there would arise slowly more fire 
and energy of utterance; and suddenly there was no 
longer any doubt of the high altitudes over which the 
audience was borne. I doubt if, in substance, form 
and utterance, there has been an orator since the days 
of Demosthenes who surpassed him." 

Phillips was born in a brick mansion still standing 
on the western corner of Beacon and Walnut Streets; 
but his home during the greater part of his life was a 
plain, ungarnished house in Essex Street, which has 
since been torn down for the extension of Harrison 
Avenue. Its next door neighbor was a provision store, 
and there was nothing without or within to indicate 
that it was the home of a man of wealth, for such he 
was, although he yearly gave away many times as much 
as he expended for the support of his own household, 
and would empty his wallet of its last dime at the faintest 
call of charity. Fortunate in choosing the riglit side of 
a great moral question, Phillips was doubly fortunate 

190 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 



in the choice of a wife wholly in sympathy with the 
cause for which he had sacrificed friends and social 
position. They w^ere lovers from youth to old age, and 
his tender devotion to her during long years of invalid- 
ism ran a thread of gold through his entire career. 
Near the end of his life he was lecturing on a winter 
night in a town many miles from Boston and distant 
from the railway. A storm of mingled snow and sleet 
setting in, he was urged by his host to postpone his return 
to the city until morning; but the suggestion was put 
aside on the instant. " I know it will be a tedious ride," 
he said, " but I shall find Ann Phillips at the end of it." 
The home of Phillips for some years before his death in 
1884 was at 37 Common Street, a thoroughfare whose 
name and character were in keeping with the impulses 
that governed his life. His grave is in the old burying- 
ground of Milton, where he lies by the side of his wife. 
A granite boulder marks their resting place, and its 
inscription, in accordance with his wish, places the 
wife's name before that of the husband. 

Phillips was a boy comrade and the chum at Harvard 
of John Lothrop ^lotley, who, though he lived abroad 
during the greater part of his career, began his labors 
as an author in Boston, and here conceived the vivid 

191 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

and dramatic yet always scholarly works which gave 
him a high place among the historians of his generation. 
These were " The Rise of the Dutch Republic," " The 
History of the United Netherlands," and the "Life and 
Death of John Barneveld"; and their composition, 
begun in 1846, when the author had barely passed his 
thirty-second year, involved half a lifetime of labor and 
study. Death stayed his pen as he was about to begin 
a history of the Thirty Years' War. Motley was born 
in Dorchester, but the home of his youth and early 
manhood was a house now gone from 7 Walnut Street, 
Avhich had an outlook down Chestnut Street and over 
the Charles to the western hills. During one of his 
visits to America in later years he resided for a single 
winter in a house in Boylston Place, afterward tenanted 
for a quarter of a century by the Boston Library Society 
and which recently has given way to an office building. 
Motley's last Boston home was at 2 Park Street, where 
he dwelt for a twelvemonth preceding his appointment 
in 1869 as minister to England. Before that he had 
represented his country for six years at the Austrian 
court. He died abroad in 1877, and was buried in 
Kensal Green Cemetery, near London. 

There was a close bond of sympathy and fellowship 
19!^ 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 

between all of the American writers who first gave to 
historical composition the qualities of literature. Pres- 
cott lent Motley counsel and assistance when he most 
needed them; and both were on terras of cordial and 
helpful friendship with George Bancroft. The long 
life of Bancroft nearly spanned a century. The son of 
a Congregational minister and born in Worcester, he 
was graduated at Harvard before his eighteenth birth- 
day, and then spent several years in Europe. After 
his return he was first a preacher and then a Greek 
tutor at Harvard, but neither for long, and in 18'23 he 
joined Joseph Cogswell in founding the famous Round 
Hill school at Northampton. This school, thought 
by many an attempt to found a German gymnasium 
in America, drew pupils from all parts of the country, 
but it was never a profitable venture, and at the end 
of ten years Bancroft withdrew from it with shortened 
purse. He next turned his attention to politics, and 
with such success that between 1838 and 1874 he 
served successively as collector for the port of Boston, 
as secretary of the navy and as minister in turn to 
England and Germany. His later years were divided 
between Ncwporl and Washington, and in the latter 
city he died in 1891, when well past his ninetieth year. 

193 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Before his appointment as collector for the port of 
Boston, Bancroft had published two volumes of his 
"History of the United States." The remaining vol- 
umes followed at uneven distances of time, the con- 
cluding one, which brought the narrative to the close 
of the Revolution, appearing in 1874, the last year of 
his embassy to the German court. He toiled at it, 
however, until the end, rewriting, revising and cor- 
recting with such infinite pains that the w^ork assumed 
its present form only a few years before his death. 
There are, indeed, few instances on record of work 
upon which so much time has been bestowed; and the 
result as a whole was worthy of the effort. Though 
often and justly criticised as turgid in style, Bancroft's 
history is a work of great research, and in its patriotic 
aspiration it is truly noble. One willingly pardons its 
faults of method for the sterling and unbending Amer- 
icanism that rings through all its pages. 

Bancroft, while collector of the port of Boston from 
1838 to 1841, had his home in a house long gone from 
the corner of Winthrop Place and Otis Street. Boston 
society as then constituted regarded failure to support 
the Whig party as the gravest of social sins; and as he 
was a Democrat and a disciple of Jackson it sternly 

194 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 

refused him recognition. "He is a person," declared 
one eminent merchant in declining an invitation to 
hear him lecture, " tolerated by nobody — except by 
Charles Sumner and William H. Prescott, who tolerate 
everybody." But despite the social bar decreed against 
him, Bancroft wherever he was knew how to draw 
around him men and women of like mind and cultiva- 
tion. jSIargaret Fuller was often a guest at his hos- 
pitable board and so was George Ripley, then under 
the spell of the dreams of social betterment which 
were soon to take form in Brook Farm. 

It was in 1826 that Ripley, lately graduated at Har- 
vard, was called to the pulpit of a newly organized 
Unitarian church in Boston, where during the next 
fifteen years he was a leader in the movement of inquiry 
and spiritual revolt which had Emerson for its chief 
figure, and which, for the want of a better one, took 
the name of Transcendentalism. The Transcendental 
Club held its first meetings at Ripley's house, and he 
was one of the editors of " The Dial," a periodical which 
for four years reflected more or less faithfully the 
thoughts and aims of the coterie. Though he con- 
tinued to preach the while, it was with steadily lessening 
regard for the traditions of the pulpit, and in 1841 he 

195 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



left it to give shape at Brook Farm to that aspiration of 
generous minds in every age — a purely democratic 
society based upon co-operation instead of competition, 
and in which all should labor in some useful way. 
But Brook Farm failed, at the end of six years of heroic 
effort to put a beautiful theory to the test, and its 
founder sought a new field of labor in New York, 
where, though his faith in human progress and frater- 
nity never weakened, his life, during the remainder of 
his days, was solely and simply that of a man of letters. 
Ripley's Boston home was in Bedford Place, since 
become a part of Chauncy Street. His church stood, 
before its destruction by fire in 1872, at the junction of 
Purchase and Pearl Streets, near to Griffin's wharf, 
where the tea ships lay in the old time. A business 
structure now occupies its site. 

The same year in which Ripley began his labors in 
Purchase Street Lyman Beecher came from Litchfield 
to Boston, bringing with him the brood of brainful 
children, two of whom were to win in after years a fame 
greater !han his o\\'n. Beecher was then in the flush 
of his powers as a preacher of signal eloquence; and 
the avowed purpose of his call to the pastorate of the 
Hanover Street Church in Bos'on was to mend, if pes- 

19G 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 



sible, the breaches in Calvinism which had been made 
by Channing and the other Unitarian leaders. He 
was, however, a man better fitted to be the apostle of a 
new creed than the belated champion of an old one. 
Neither a profound scholar or an exact thinker, but 
bold to the point of audacity, such influence as he ex- 
erted sprang from the pungent appeal, the lambent wit 
and the native vigor of thought which distinguished his 
oratory. He seldom convinced men, but he always 
profoundly moved them, and the emotional stimulus 
of his sermons was unconsciously returned to him by 
his hearers. His daughter relates that it was his wont, 
after having been wrought by the excitement of preach- 
ing, to relax his mind by playing on the violin, or joining 
in a Uvely dance with his children. " If I were to go to 
bed," he would say, " at the key at which I leave off 
preaching I should toss and tumble all night. I must 
let off steam gradually, and then I can sleep like a 
child." Beecher's brave but barren attempt to revive 
the spirit of Puritanism in its ancient stronghold ended 
in 1832, when he departed for Cincinnati to become the 
untheological head of a newly founded theological sem- 
inary. His Boston home Avas in Sheafe Street, and one 
finds in Hanover Street, midway between Elm and 

107 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Union, the site of the church where he preached with 
fervid if mistaken zeal. 

Three other Boston churchmen of Ripley's time in 
whom the literary impulse was also strong were James 
Freeman Clarke, Cyrus A. Bartol and Orestes A. 
Brownson. Clarke was a Bostonian nearly all his life. 
He was graduated at Harvard in 1831, and for seven 
years filled a Unitarian pulpit in Louisville ; but he then 
returned to Boston, and in 1841 founded the Church of 
the Disciples, which combined many of the best things 
in the service of half a dozen sects, and of which he 
remained the pastor until his death. He was always 
busy with his pen, and the list of his published works is 
a long one, the most important being his "Ten Great 
Religions," written with a breadth of view and a gen- 
erous insight which enabled its author to find in every 
faith proof of the fatherhood of God and the brother- 
hood of man. Bartol was born in Maine in 1813, 
and in 1837 began his lifelong association with the 
West Churcli in Boston, first as colleague and then 
as the successor of Charles Lowell, father of the poet. 
He was active in the Transcendental movement, and 
until the end of his life a leader of radical religious 
thought, his views finding expression in a number of 

198 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 

volumes of essays of uncommon and individual quality. 
Clarke's home from 1854 until his death in 1888, at 
the age of seventy-eight, was in Woodside Avenue, 
Jamaica Plain, while Bartol lived during the last of his 
nearly ninety years of life at 17 Chestnut Street, across 
the way and but a few doors removed from the some- 
time home of Edwin Booth, the actor. 

Brownson, born in 1803 and for twenty years fol- 
lowing 183G a resident of Boston, was a man who 
would have warmed the heart of Cromwell and his 
Ironsides, albeit a caprice of fate willed that his work 
should be done not in the seventeenth but in the middle 
decades of the nineteenth century. A native of Ver- 
mont and early left an orphan, Brownson was reared 
under the Puritan discipline of elderly relatives, and, 
after a youth in which there was much struggle and 
little sunshine, became at nineteen a preacher of the 
Presbyterian faith. Three years later he swayed into 
Universalism ; and from 1836 to 1843 he filled a Uni- 
tarian pulpit in Boston; nor did his search for a creed 
wholly to his liking end until in 1844 he entered the 
Roman Church. Even there he was not entirely at 
home, and his often radical and always positive views, 
trenchantly expressed in journals of his own establish- 

199 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

ment, more than once brought him into colHsion with 
those in authority. He was ever ready to deal sharp 
blows and to take them; no man knew better how to 
puncture shams and frauds of every sort; and one 
turns from the pages of his essays and reviews, which 
collected and published by his son now fill nineteen 
octavo volumes, with the conviction that it was good 
for his age that it should have had a Brownson. The 
home of this vagrant, self-willed fighter during the 
Boston period of his career was in Chelsea. The last 
years of his life were divided between New York and 
Detroit, where he died at the age of seventy-three. 

A wide gulf separated Brownson on the one hand 
from Bartol, who all his days was a dreamer and a 
mystic, and on the other from Thomas William Par- 
sons, a poet who was of his own time yet stood apart 
from it. Parsons was born in Boston in 1819, studied 
medicine in the Harvard Medical School, and for a 
long time practiced, first in his native city and later in 
London, the profession of dentistry. But he finally 
returned to America, where his latter years were devoted 
wholly to literary pursuits. A prolonged sojourn in 
Italy while still in his youth introduced him to Dante, 
and love for the great Italian remained thereafter the 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 



dominant influence in his life. In 1843 he put forth a 
translation into Enghsh verse of the first ten cantos 
of the " Infemo," and twenty-four years hiter the com- 
plete version made its appearance. Still tolling stead- 
ily at the task he had set for himself, it was with such 
loving care that he made progress slowly, and when he 
died in 1892 he left "The Purgatorio" uncompleted, 
and only a beginning of " The Paradiso." But what 
he accomplished shows that had he lived to complete 
his task we should have had at last what scholars have 
waited for through centuries, a translation of Dante 
preserving along with its meter the music, the continuity 
and the supple power of the original. 

Besides earning as a translator a station with the 
hit'hest. Dr. Parsons was the author of a slender volume 
of original verse which if narrow in range is nearly 
always exquisite in form and quality. His " Lines on 
a Bust of Dante," "Paradisi Gloria," "The Feud of 
the Flute-Players," " St. Peray " and " Count Ernst von 
Mansfeldt, the Protestant" are among the finest and 
strongest things of their kind in the language, and prove 
by the classic beauty of their style that their author 
deser\'es to stand close to Collins and Gray and Eandor 
in the temple of English song. And in the memory of 

201 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

a rare and delightful personality, Dr. Parsons left to 
those who knew him a legacy no less precious than his 
written word. "One of Plutarch's men," Alger calls 
him, and those who came in contact with him bear 
witness to the serenity of spirit, the rare and sparkling 
humor, and the unfailing charm which made devoted 
friends of all Avho knew him. The last Boston home 
of this uncommon man and artist was a house which 
stood aforetime in Beacon Hill Place, a quiet and se- 
cluded by-way near to the Athenaeum, among whose 
alcoves it was his wont to pass many of his waking 
hours. The later comer, however, seeks in vain for 
house and by-way, for both have been swept away 
to add space to the park about the State House. 

When Dr. Parsons published his first volume of Dante 
translations there had lately come to reside in Boston 
a young woman of four-and-twenty who was to win by 
a single poem a larger measure of fame than the labors 
of a lifetime brought to her fellow poet. Julia Ward 
was the gifted and beautiful daughter of a well-to-do 
New York merchant who during a visit to Boston gave 
her heart and hand to Dr. Samuel G. Howe. They 
were married in 1843, and immediately went abroad, 
spending two years in England and on the Continent. 

202 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 



Dr. Howe had begun his a(ti\e hfe as a chivah'ous 
soldier in the service of the Greeks, the same cause 
that enhsted the enthusiasm of Lord Byron. After 
spending several months of hardship with the patriot 
forces in the mountains of Greece, he returned to Boston 
to take up what was to become his life work, the educa- 
tion of the deaf, the dumb and the blind; and when he 
married Miss Ward he had already won a world-wide 
reputation by his success in the famous case of Laura 
Bridgman, a young girl born blind and deaf whom 
he had taught to read, write and play the piano. 

Coming back to America the Howes found a Boston 
home, first in the Institution for the Blind, of which 
the doctor was director, and later in Boylston Place, 
where they were living when in 1853 the wife made her 
first important contribution to literature in a volume 
of verse called " Passion Flowers." Both early became 
identified with the anti-slavery movement, and together 
edited the "Boston Commonwealth," a journal de- 
voted to its advancement. Then came the Civil War, 
and a journey to Washington in the closing days of 
1861 which gave birth to the "Battle Hymn of the 
Republic." One afternoon the Howes and a party of 
friends attended a Union review held on the Virginia 

203 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

side of the Potomac. A highway filled with marching 
troops impeded their return to the city, and Mrs. Howe, 
to beguile the time, began to sing "John Brown's 
Body," upon which the soldiers took up the strain, 
shouting in the intervals, " Good for you ! " One of 
the party remarked on the excellence of the tune, and 
Mrs. Howe answered that she had long cherished a 
desire to write some words of her own that might be 
sung to it, adding, however, that she feared she would 
never be able to do it. She lay down that night filled 
with thoughts of battle, and awoke before dawn to 
find the desired verses swiftly taking shape in her mind. 
When she had thought out the last of five stanzas she 
sprang from her bed, and in the dim, gray light found 
a pen and paper, whereon she wrote, scarcely seeing 
them, the lines of the poem. Returning to her couch 
she was presently asleep, but not until she had said to 
herself, "I like this best of all I have written," a 
verdict in which she has been sustained by time. 

The lines, given their present title ])y James T. Fields, 
then editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," were first pub- 
lished in that magazine, and, strange to say, attracted 
little attention at the moment. Soon, however, the 
story went abroad of how the Union soldiers in Libby 

204 



THE AUTOCRAT AND HIS COMRADES 

I ■■■■■■■■ ■ p i I ■ I ■ I ■ ■ ■■ . ■ ■ . ■_— Ml.!— ^l»^^»^»^— ^^^^^^^—^l— ■ ^ 

Prison, upon hearing of a Northern victory, had made 
the walls that confined them ring with their singing of 
the hymn which one of them had found in a stray 
newspaper. This incident gave it popularity, and there- 
after it took its place as the leading lyric of the war. 
Its author delights to tell how long afterward when she 
visited Roberts College, at Constantinople, the good 
professors and their ladies, at parting, asked her to 
listen well to what she might hear after she had left 
them. She did so, and heard borne to her on the 
evening air in sweet, full cadence the lines which scarce- 
ly seemed her own, so much are they breath of an heroic 
time and the feeling with which that time was filled. 
The Howes soon after the close of the Civil War re- 
moved to 13 Chestnut Street, a house which in another 
time had the Reverend John T. Sargent for an occupant 
and was the meeting place of the Radical Club, lineally 
descended from the Transcendental Club of earlier and 
greater fame. Dr. Howe died in 187G, and a little later 
the widow removed to '241 Beacon Street, the home of 
her old age. Here, as in Boylston Place and Chestnut 
Street, her rare instinct for social leadership has drawn 
around her the most brilliant people; and here, at the 
age of eighty-four, she still keeps her mind active, her 

205 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

interests fresh and her hand busy. Her passing — far 
distant be the day of it — will be the end not only of 
a noble life but of an era. 



306 



Chapter VIII 

The Boston of a Later Time 

The Civil War in a measure eclipsed the fame of 
Theodore Parker, but during the debate and turmoil 
which preceded that conflict than his no braver voice 
was raised in behalf of truth and justice. Wendell 
Phillips, a discerning judge in such matters, called him 
the Jupiter Tonans of the pulpit; and it is doubtful 
whether — mere elocutionary eloquence aside — the 
ages have brought forth a greater preacher. Born in 
1810 in the old battle town of Lexington, whose Minute 
Men his grandfather captained in the first fight of the 
Revolution, Parker worked his way through Harvard, 
and at the age of twenty-six was settled as pastor of a 
Unitarian church in West Roxbury. Nine years he 
labored there, years of steady mental and moral growth, 
and of increasing fame and influence. Then came his 
transfer to the pastorate of the Twenty-eighth Congre- 
gational Society of Boston, from whose pulpit for four- 
teen years he thundered against bigotry and injustice in 
every form. He was tabooed and shunned by his timid 

207 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

fellows of the church, who shrank from the conse- 
quences of his bold utterances; but from first to last 
the common people heard him gladly, because, as Dr. 
Chadwick has happily pointed out, he clothed his ser- 
mons in "a style shaped not on books but on the sim- 
plicities of daily life, on loving reminiscences of farm 
and field, upon the language of his father's honest 
thought, his mother's homely prayers. The learning 
was there also, but so transfused into his personal life 
as to be no one's but his own when it came welling to 
his lips and streaming from his pen. The most un- 
learned preacher in Boston or New England was not 
so gifted in the common speech of men as he." 

Beliind Parker's gift of common speech, moreover, 
lay uncommon ability, courage, honesty and earnest- 
ness. He was brave enough to be an outspoken heretic 
at a time when heresy was still counted a grievous sin; 
he had courage enough to be an uncompromising enemy 
of slavery when only the lion-hearted made bold to 
assail an institution recognized and guaranteed by or- 
ganic law; he was honest enough to make any personal 
sacrifice rather than yield a shred of any principle he 
had deliberately adopted; and he was earnest enough 
to exhaust his vital forces in the work to which he had 

208 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

consecrated his life, and to perish prematurely at the 
age of fifty. "There are two Theodore Parkers," he 
said to those who stood at his bedside at the end. " One 
is dying here in Florence, and the other is planted in 
America." He but spoke the truth, for lie is planted 
not only in America but in Europe as well — and is 
growing in both continents with the growth of a thought 
that is at once independent and devout. Thousands 
owe him a debt they fail to acknowledge because they 
know not whence came the spiritual ideas which have 
brightened and blessed their lives and flung a ray of 
hope upon the dark background of eternity. 

Parker's Boston home was a house in Exeter Place 
demolished in 1882 to make way for the extension of 
Harrison Avenue, while one finds in Washington Street 
the site of the Melodeon where he preached during the 
earlier years of his Boston ministry. The scene of his 
later labors was Music Hall in Hamilton Place, now a 
theater. He died, as we know, in Italy at the end of a 
vain search for health that had carried him across seas, 
and a resting place was made for him in the Protestant 
cemetery at Florence. A recent visitor found his grave 
better known to its custodians than any of its fellows, 
and the winding path which leads to it evidently trodtlen 

209 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

by many pilgrim feet. Kindly hands have planted a 
rose-bush, and sprays of evergreen and fresh flowers 
are not unfrequent offerings upon the grassy shrine. 
And so this typical American sleeps in an alien land 
with none of his race beside him. Mayhap he would 
have had it so ; for no man was more catholic in charac- 
ter and creed — none had a more generous humanity. 
Another preacher to the Boston of half a century ago 
whose eloquence and power of speech have become one 
of the city's cherished traditions was Thomas Starr 
King, who for eleven years following 1848 filled the 
pulpit of the Hollis Street Church, a Unitarian congre- 
gation with a history reaching back to 1732, and num- 
bering among its former pastors such men as Mather 
Byles, wittiest of colonial divines, and that fiery cham- 
pion of the slave, John Pierpont. The son of a Uni- 
versalist minister and born in 1824, King's later youth 
and early manhood were passed in the Boston suburb 
of Charlestown, and in 1846, at the age of twenty-two, 
he was called to the pulpit which his father had filled 
before him. A short two years later he accepted an 
invitation to become the pastor of the Hollis Street 
Church, and in this larger field speedily won national 
repute as the fervid and brilliant expounder of a liberal 

210 



THE BOSTON OF A LA T E R T I M E 

creed. It was a time, also, when politics had invaded 
the province of morals and religion, and toward the 
burning question which then filled men's thoughts the 
attitude of the young preacher was that of a stout and 
unyielding champion of freedom. Year after year his 
voice was raised in behalf of the bondman, and if his 
appeals had in them less of passion and bitterness than 
those of Parker, they were always charged with an 
earnestness that made them a vital force in the moral 
awakening that ushered in the Civil War. 

Admired as a preacher. King was also beloved as a 
man. Though endowed with exceptional gifts of mind, 
in its last analysis his influence, like that of Emerson, 
was the influence of an uncommon and winning per- 
sonality. He shed upon all who came in contact with 
him the fine and quickening sunshine of the soul. " His 
was the rare felicity," writes Whipple, "in everything 
he said and did, of communicating himself, the most 
precious thing he could bestow ; and he so bound others 
to him by this occupation of their hearts, that to love 
him was to love a second self. Everybody he met he 
unconsciously enriched; whithersoever he went he 
instinctively organized," and "his parish covered the 
ever-enlarging circle of his acquaintances and audi- 

211 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

ences." King left Boston in 1860 to become the pastor 
of a Unitarian church in San Francisco, and there he 
died in 1864, at the early age of forty, but not before 
he had led in a heroic and successful effort to keep 
California loyal to the Union during the Civil War. 
His Boston home was long at 12 Burroughs Place, but 
he afterwards lived for a short time at 76 Dover Street. 
A playhouse has covered for many years the site of his 
church in Hollis Street. 

The career of yet another famous pulpit orator whom 
Boston delighted to honor was just beginning when 
that of King came too soon to an end. " Great is he 
who in some special vocation does good and helpful 
work for his fellowmen. Greater still is he who, doing 
good work in his special occupation, carries within his 
devotion to it a human nature so rich and true that it 
l)reaks through his profession and claims the love and 
honor of his fellowmen, simply and purely as a man." 
Thus Phillips Brooks once wrote of Milton, and in so 
doing unconsciously outlined his own character and 
career, for great as he was as a preacher he was greater 
still as a man. Born in Boston in 183i3, he was gradu- 
ated at Harvard at the age of twenty, and then pre- 
I)ared for the Episcopal ministry at the theological 

212 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

seminary in Alexandria, Va. He took orders in 1859 
and at once became rector of the Church of the Advent 
in Philadelphia, passing soon to the Church of the Holy 
Trinity in the same city. There he remained until 
1869, when he accepted a call to Trinity Church in 
Boston, which he served as rector until, in 1891, he 
was chosen bishop of Massachusetts. 

Brooks arrested attention from the beginning of his 
career as a man of remarkable gifts, and during the 
latter half of it he was regarded both within and with- 
out liis own denomination as the foremost preacher of 
his time and country. Nature had framed him when 
in one of her prodigal moods, and, with his lofty stature 
and Ills massive, clean-cut face, he was as noble and 
imposing a figure as ever stood in any pulpit. He was 
charged, moreover, with a message that commanded a 
hearing from all sorts and conditions of men — a mes- 
sage wliich had to do with the spiritual essence and re- 
formator}' principles of Christianity rather than ecclesi- 
astical forms and theological dogmas. "He pene- 
trated," writes Allen, "beneath the formula to the 
truth for which it stood. What he brought as ap- 
parently new was often in reality old, while much that 
he did not utter lay behind in the depth of his soul as 

213 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

motive and inspiration. In an age when many had 
grown indifferent to churches, or could find in no church 
the food for which their souls were hungering; to whom 
the Bible had become unfamiliar, and the convention- 
alties of religious expression had lost their meaning; 
who, somehow, amid the distractions of modern life, 
had fallen out of sympathy with historic Christianity; 
to those so shaken by doubt that they could no longer 
understand, or were impatient with creeds, catechisms 
and confessions — to all these Phillips Brooks was the 
divine instrument for restoring faith toward God and 
love toward man. He threw the weight of his eloquence 
and of his life into the cause of humanity as the off- 
spring of God; and he so illustrated, illumined and 
applied this truth that it sounded, when he preached it, 
like something that had never been heard in the world 
before. Those who listened to it were struck as if with 
awe, when ushered into the presence of the majesty 
of the divine potentiality of the true self within them." 
Phillips Brooks was much more than the greatest 
preacher of his time. His range was as wide as the 
world, and he touched life at many points. The least 
of his sermons witnesses, in the rhythm of its style and 
the music of its words, that he was a poet by nature; 

214 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

one song that he wrote, " O Little Town of Bethlehem," 
will be sung so long as Christmas Day endures; and it 
is not to be doubted that had he followed his early in- 
clining toward a career in literature his place would 
have been among the greatest. No worthy cause which 
moved the people failed in its appeal to his large and 
generous nature; he was the fearless champion of pro- 
gress both within and without the church; and he was 
broad enough to be at the same time a typical citizen 
of America, and — of the world. What with his fre- 
quent journeys abroad and the close and enduring 
friendships he formed there, he was as much at home 
in England as in his own land, and as effective when 
preaching before the Queen as when addressing his 
own people in Boston. Artists found him a kindred 
spirit, familiar with and loving only the best in sculp- 
ture, architecture and painting. He was at home also 
with children, and his modesty and simplicity, com- 
bined with his charm of conversation and a sympathy 
which had in it no trace of condescension, made him 
an unfailing favorite with young men, who in meeting 
him for the first time were sure to find a new and up- 
lifting influence entering into their lives. 

Yet nowhere did Phillips Brooks shine more brightly 
215 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

than in his work among the lowly and the poor. People 
who never attended his church, some of whom had 
never heard him preach, did not fear to ask him to offi- 
ciate when death entered the family circle; and he never 
refused such a request if he had time at his disposal to 
grant it. An appeal for aid always found him with 
open purse, and there are current a thousand anecdotes 
of his quiet yet sufficing philanthropy. A printer con- 
nected with one of the Boston daily papers fell sick, 
and the men in his office raised a subscription to help 
him make a trip to California. One day the cashier 
called up through the speaking-tube to the foreman of 
the composing-room and said : 

"A gentleman wishes to see you." 

"All right, send him up," was the reply. "I would 
go down, but I can't leave my work." 

A few minutes later the foreman was astonished to 
see Brooks entering the composing-room, four flights 
from the street and there was no elevator. The visitor 
said he had learned of what the printers were doing for 
one of their fellows, and, satisfied that it would be a 
kind act to a worthy man, he slipped a $20 note into 
the foreman's hand, asking that it be added to the fund, 
but refusing to allow his name to appear on the sub- 

216 



THE BOSTON OF \ LATER TIME 

scription list. And so it was that when Phillips Brooks 
died at the age of fifty-eight the people of his native city 
mourned him as they had mourned no other man of his 
generation. The site of his birthplace at 56 High 
Street, hard by the comer of Pearl, is now covered by a 
business structure. During liis first years as rector of 
Trinity Church he lived in turn at 34 Mt. Vernon Street 
and at 175 Marlborough Street. The home of his last 
days was a house at 233 Clarendon Street, built for 
him by the people of his parish. 

The careers of Brooks and Edward Everett Hale for 
many years ran side by side. The latter, however, was 
the elder by a dozen years, and he has long survived his 
fellow preacher. A great-nephew on the paternal side 
of Nathan Hale, the patriot of the Revolution, and a 
nephew on the maternal side of Edward Everett, for 
whom he was named, Hale was born in Boston, where 
his father was the founder and first editor of the " Ad- 
vertiser." Graduated at Harvard in 1839, being then 
only seventeen years of age, his career as a minister be- 
gan in 18^2, the time between this and 1846, when he 
became the pastor of the Church of the Unity in Worces- 
ter, being spent as a ministerial free-lance. In 185G he 
assumed charge of the South Congregational Church 

217 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

in Boston, which he served as pastor for the long space 
of forty-five years and of which he still is pastor emeri- 
tus. It has been said of Dr. Hale that the mold in 
which he was cast was broken at his birth; and certain 
it is that his methods as a preacher are individual and 
wholly his own. His pulpit discourses more often than 
not run counter to the art of sermon-making as laid 
down in the schools, but they always have been clothed 
in words understandable of all men, and dealing with 
themes of contemporary interest have taught the gospel 
of charity in spirit and in deed. 

Dr. Hale's influence as a preacher, moreover, stands 
for only one phase of a varied and fruitful life. An- 
other has to do with his constant and well directed labors 
as a social reformer. From youth to old age no move- 
ment looking to the betterment of his fellows has failed 
to enlist his voice and [)en. He has been a lifelong 
champion of the negro as slave and as freedman ; civil- 
service reform and prison reform early knew him as an 
advocate; and than he no man has done more to enlist 
the youth of the country in organized altruistic service, 
for from the type of religious activity set forth in stories 
written by him sprang the King's Daughters and the 

Lend a Hand Clubs, and indirectly the Ep worth League 

218 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 



and the Society of Christian Endeavor. Last in point 
of time, but not the least of his services as a reformer, 
he has given effective voice to the spirit which demands 
peace on earth and the better organization of the world; 
and he was one of the first to urge upon our own and 
other lands the idea of a permanent judiciary for the 
arbitration of disputes between nations such as in 1899 
took form in the Hague Convention. 

It is as an author, however, that Dr. Hale has, per- 
haps, done his best and most lasting work. His career 
as a man of letters began in 1848, and at the age of 
eighty-two he is still busy with his pen. Six score titles 
of books and pamphlets, dealing with every conceivable 
aspect of contemporary life, bear witness in the library 
lists to his untiring industry and his remarkable ver- 
satility; but his genius has found happiest expression 
in a few of his short stories, such as "My Double and 
How He Undid Me," "The Man Without a Country," 
" Ten Times One is Ten " and " In His Name." The 
second of these, written in 18G3 to show what would 
become of a man who wished he had no country, was 
a trumpet call to the people of the North in the darkest 
hours of the Civil War, and it remains after the lapse 
of years one of the most compelling sermons on patriot- 



219 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

ism ever penned by an American. "Ten Times One 
is Ten" has been not less potent in its influence for 
good, and there is pleasure in the thought that the whole- 
some motto of its hero, " Look up and not down ; look 
forward and not back; look out and not in; and lend a 
hand," echoes also the guiding principles in the life of 
a man who has never borrowed trouble, or failed to 
lend a hand to those needing aid when the chance to 
do so fell in his way. 

The Parker House in Tremont Street covers the site 
of Dr. Hale's birthplace, and the home of his boyhood 
in Tremont Place has given way to an office building. 
For a dozen years after his return to Boston in 1856 he 
lived in Worcester Street, not far from his church, but 
his home since 1869 has been at 39 Highland Street in 
the Roxbury district, in a house that reminds one, with 
its massive front and Ionic columns, of a Greek temple. 
This house before Dr. Hale bought it was used for a 
young ladies' boarding-school, and what was once the 
school-room, stretching across one sunny side, is now 
his library and study. Thousands of volumes crowd 
the shelves, which reach to the ceiling and emerge from 
the walls by the windows; but these shelves long ago 
proved too small for the ever-growing collection, and 

220 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

now in a room below there are nearly as many more, 
while the shelves of another room off the library are 
filled with pamphlets, tracts and unbound volumes. 
Books, however, form only a part of the riches 
of Dr. Hale's home. Everywhere there are piquant 
reminders of his long and busy life and the friends 
and associations it has brought him. And yet, when 
the visitor's enthusiasm kindles at sight of these treas- 
ures, their owner, with the smile that from time to 
time lights up his rugged features, is sure to tell him 
that the most precious of all his possessions is the wife 
who still abides with him. And he but speaks the 
truth, for Mrs. Hale, a niece of Mrs. Stowe, has been 
for half a century an ideal helpmeet for the man to 
whom in youth she gave her heart and hand. 

Not far from Dr. Hale's last home is the house num- 
bered 125 Highland Street, which was occupied by 
William Lloyd Garrison through his later years. This 
house came to the great agitator in 1864 as a gift from 
his admirers, and there, the cause for which he had 
battled triumphant, he passed the peaceful, star-lit 
evening of his stormy career. Time, however, has 
spared few material reminders of Garrison's long fight 
against slavery. The building at the corner of Con- 

221 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

gress and Water Streets, near the north side of what is 
now Post Office Square, from one of whose attic cham- 
bers, "dark, unfurnitured and mean," he issued in 
1831 the first numbers of "The Liberator," was swept 
away in the fire of 1872; and one also searches in vain 
for the rambUng pile in Washington Street backing on 
Devonshire where he had his office when, in 1835, he 
was haled through the streets by a mob and afterward 
jailed by the city authorities as a "disturber of the 
peace." But the heretic of yesterday having become 
the hero of to-day, Garrison's name is now held in 
reverence by the city which once reviled him ; and since 
1886 there has stood in one of its public places W^arner's 
splendid statue of him, bearing in graven letters on its 
base the promise of his early manhood redeemed by 
thirty -five years of heroic service : " I am in earnest — 
I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not 
retreat a single inch — and I will be heard." 

It was a noble company of whom Garrison was the 
central figure, but the years, working strange caprices, 
have denied many of its members the full measure of 
fame which came to their leader. Thus the name of 
Edmund Quincy has already lapsed into a forgctful- 
ness which is and must remain a mystery to every 

222 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

student of the anti-slavery movement, for if Garrison 
was its leader and Phillips its orator, he was easily the 
ablest writer, the poet Whittier excepted, enlisted in 
its support. A son of Josiali Quincy, and born in 1808, 
Edmund Quincy was duly graduated at Harvard, 
where, to quote the words of his friend Lowell, he be- 
came "learned in those arts that make a gentleman," 
and a few years later joined hands with Garrison in 
the work of arousing the North to the ugliness of slavery. 
He was not an orator, but he had rare power as a sati- 
rist, and both in "The Liberator" and the New York 
" Tribune " he dealt blows whose sting was felt by their 
victims long after the occasion for them had become a 
part of the past. He also knew how to combine reform 
with literature; his life of his father, written after his 
pen had ceased to be a militant one, is in most respects 
the ideal of what a biography should be, while his 
"Wensley" and "The Haunted Adjutant" come so 
near to being first-rate pieces of fiction that one wonders 
why they do not still find readers. The home of 
Quincy's early manhood was at 49 Beacon Street, but 
he lived for many years and died at Bankside, Dedham, 
a fine old house with grounds reacliing from the main 
street to the Charles River. 

223 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

One of those whose failure to see the right as clearly 
as he saw it made them a tempting target for Quincy's 
shafts in the anti-slavery days was Robert C. Winthrop, 
who unto a green old age splendidly sustained the tra- 
ditions of the school of oratory rendered illustrious by 
Webster and Everett. Winthrop's race, like that of 
Quincy, was one of the most aristocratic in New Eng- 
land, for he was sprung from John Winthrop, governor 
of Massachusetts, and from that other John Winthrop 
who was governor of Connecticut, Equipped not only 
with the advantage of honored descent, but also with a 
competent private fortune, he studied law under Web- 
ster, and, making an early entrance into politics, helped 
to found the Whig party, of which he was for many years 
one of the most eloquent and potent champions. In 
1834, at the age of twenty-five, he was chosen a repre- 
sentative from Boston to the Massachusetts legislature, 
and served there six years. Afterwards he was for ten 
years a member of the House at Washington, and its 
speaker for a single term. 

When, in 1850, Webster became Secretary of State, 
Winthrop was appointed Senator by the governor of 
Massachusetts to take his place, but in 1851, when a 
candidate before the legislature, was defeated by a 

224 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

coalition of Democrats and Free Soilers which placed 
Sumner there in his stead. The same year a like coali- 
tion compassed his defeat for governor of ^Slassachu- 
setts, whereupon, angered at the Free Soilers, who had 
humiliated and rejected him because his way of deal- 
ing with the slavery question differed from their own, 
he retired from politics. He never again held oflSce 
during the three and forty years of life that remained 
to him, and thus by his own act put aside the great 
destiny that seemed to have been assigned to him. 
But he was not idle in his self-sought retirement. He 
interested himself in literary pursuits and benevolent 
enterprises, and he continued for many years to be the 
chosen and admired orator at the celebration of his- 
torical anniversaries and other public ceremonies, never 
failing to lift himself to the level of a high subject. 
Winthrop's birthplace was a house long since gone 
from ]\Iilk Street. The home of his last years was at 
90 Marlborough Street. 

Because he was unable to bow to a temporary defeat 
and thereafter made himself a stranger to the great 
purposes of life, Winthrop died almost unknown to the 
masses of his countrymen. The name of Epcs Sargent 
is saved from like oblivion only by a single piece of 

225 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

verse. Born at Gloucester in 1813, Sargent was edu- 
cated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard, and 
early entered upon a lettered career. During the first 
half of his life he wrote many dramas, novels and poems, 
though " A Life on the Ocean Wave " is his only piece 
of original work that has escaped forgetfulness ; and 
he was also and for long a hard-working editor, first of 
the New York "Mirror" and afterward of the Boston 
"Transcript." He retired from editorial labor, how- 
ever, while still a young man, and the remainder of his 
active life was devoted to the editing and compilation 
of school-books, his best remembered effort in this field 
being "Sargent's Standard Speaker," which brought 
together in appealing and effective form a great num- 
ber of the masterpieces of poetry and eloquence, and 
so remains a treasure in the breasts of thousands of old 
boys. Its editor's home for many years before his 
death in 1880 was at the corner of Moreland and 
Fairland Streets, in the Roxbury district. 

When Sargent entered upon the editorship of the 
"Transcript" in 1846, Francis Parkman, though ten 
years his junior, had already begun the life work which 
was to win him rank as, perhaps, the greatest of Ameri- 
can historians. The story of Parkman's career is one 

220 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

of the most heroic in literary annals. lie was born 
in 1823 in a house which still stands, though greatly 
altered, at 4a Allston Street, and passed his boyhood 
and youth in the stately mansion built by his grand- 
fa' her, and long gone from 5 Bowdoin Square. He 
was graduated at Harvard in 1844, and soon after- 
ward, feeling the literary impulse strong within him, 
fixed his thoughts upon a history of the rise and fall of 
the French dominion in America, a subject which 
had not then been touched by any writer. It was 
a brave resolve, for, the leisure that comes with 
inherited wealth aside, never did an author begin a 
great work under heavier handicaps. His eyes failed 
him in youth and ever afterward refused their usual 
service, while a physical organism strangely compound- 
ed of strength and weakness made consecutive labor 
impossible all his life. 

And yet never was task discharged in a more thorough 
and masterly way. Parkman was to tell the story of 
the contact of Europeans with savages in the American 
wilderness, and to properly equip himself for it, he re- 
solved to know the Indians in their natural state, and 
to see life from their point of view. Accordingly, he 
spent the summer of 184G among the aborigines in the 

227 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

West, and his first book, "The Oregon Trail," which 
chronicles his experiences in the wilderness, remains 
the best description we have of Indian life and customs. 
The hardships attendant upon his wanderings cost 
him a long and serious illness, but when again able to 
work, though only for a part of each day, he pushed 
forward with a courage that conquered all obstacles. 

One of Parkman's long-time friends has described 
with a sympathy that kindles enthusiasm how slowly 
yet surely his work took form. "All the manuscript 
documents for one book," we are told; "were read 
slowly to him by an assistant, and gone over from be- 
ginning to end. He had the manuscripts read to him 
first for the leading points, and then he went over them 
again for the details of the story. At these readings 
he made, first, essential, and then non-essential notes. 
The further notes were references to essential passages 
in the different volumes, and when he was ready to 
dictate he held these notes in hand, and carefully studied 
them until he felt the imagination quickening as if he 
were one of the actors in the story. The narrative be- 
came as real as life. He held the materials in his grasp 
until they caught fire from himself. It was a slow, 
laborious process by which the story grew, but the con- 

228 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

centration of the pent-up forces upon the work was such 
that it became a part of his Ufe. The Indian wars, as 
he used to say, ran in his head, and in sleepless hours 
the work was like food to his strong and clear mind. 
Parkman could never explain his method. He had 
immense bodies of material to deal with, and he 
wrought them into clear and consecutive stories, and 
then dictated them as an artist paints a picture, putting 
in color and character wherever they were required. 
Very little was done without suffering, and the truth is 
that for nearly fifty years he toiled day after day amid 
limitations so severe that work seemed almost impos- 
sible, waiting for moments of health as his greatest 
blessing, glad to do a little, and always thankful when 
he could do more. He could not go into society, be- 
cause it consumed his strength. He could see but few 
friends in his own house, for the same reason. His 
own family had to shield him from excitements. It 
was like fighting with destiny to do anything, yet month 
by month the noiseless fabric grew, and book after 
book was published, until his plan was completed." 
The publication of Parkman's seven individual 
works, each written independent of the rest, but form- 
ing when read as a whole the continuous story of 

229 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

"France and England in North America," began in 
1865 with " The Pioneers of France in the New World," 
and this was followed at irregular interv^als by "The 
Jesuits in North America," "La Salle and the Dis- 
covery of the Great West," " Count Frontenac and 
New France under Louis XIV," "The Old Regime in 
Canada," "A Half Century of Conflict," and "Mont- 
calm and Wolfe." The last of the series to appear 
was "A Half Century of Conflict," published in 1892, 
and in the following year the life of the author came 
to an end. But his was a happy death, for he had lived 
to complete a work which by reason of its just and im- 
partial treatment of delicate points, its splendid fusing 
of many elements into an organic whole, and its sus- 
tained and realizing exercise of the historical imagina- 
tion, has taken its place among the noblest monuments 
of intellectual effort in our literature. Parkman was 
married in 1852, and until the death of his wife in 1858 
had his home at 8 Walnut Street. Thereafter he lived 
with his sister, in the winter at 50 Chestnut Street, 
where his workroom was in the attic story with his 
library, and in the summer and autumn in a house, 
which he purchased in 1854, on the bank of Jamaica 
Pond, and whose site has now become a part of one of 
the city's parks. 

£30 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

The careers of Justin Winsor and John Codraan Ropes 
long ran parallel with that of Parkman, and both, like 
him, did enduring work as historians. Winsor was 
born in Boston in 1831, studied at Harvard and Heidel- 
berg, and then served in turn as librarian of the Boston 
Public Library and of Harvard, filling the latter post 
during the last twenty years of his life. He was bom 
with a genius for constant and assiduous labor, and 
while winning a foremost place among American libra- 
rians, found leisure for an amount of literary work re- 
markable alike for quantity and quality. The " Mem- 
orial History of Boston," in four large volumes, and 
the "Narrative and Critical History of America," in 
eight, were edited by him, and at the time of his death 
in 1897 he had already published three volumes of a 
projected series on the early history of the country, 
based on a careful study of original documents, which 
will long be the most consulted by scholars of all upon 
their subject. Ropes, born in 1836 and graduated at 
Harvard at the age of twenty, in the intervals of his 
labors as a lawyer of large practice, devoted himself to 
the study and exposition of military history, producing 
an admirable biography of the first Napoleon, and leav- 
ing uncompleted what promised to be the most illumi- 

231 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

nating of all accounts of the Civil War. Winsor lived 
while a resident of Boston at 61 Brookline Street, 
and the home of Ropes for many years before his 
death in 1899 was at 99 Mt. Vernon Street. 

Charles Carleton Coffin, born in the same year as 
Parkman but to widely different conditions, holds a 
secure if modest place in our literary history. Coffin's 
father wrested a scant living from a stony and unfertile 
New Hampshire farm, and the son was self taught save 
for such education as he received in the schools of the 
countryside. After a brief period of farming, he was 
first a land surveyor and then a telegrapher, but soon 
became a contributor to the press, and following 1854 
held places on various Boston newspapers. He went 
to the front in 1861 as correspondent of the Boston 
"Journal," and his letters, written over the signature of 
" Carleton," told in a vivid and stirring way the story 
of the Army of the Potomac from Bull Run to Appo- 
mattox. In 1866 he reported the war between Italy, 
Austria and Prussia. Then he made a tour of the 
world, sending weekly letters to the "Journal"; but 
after 1870 he applied himself chiefly to the authorship 
of historical books for boys, and at his death in 189G 
left behind him an output of nearly a score of volumes, 

232 



THE BOS T O N () F A LATER II M E 

all written with no small degree of literary charm, and 
in such a manner as to foster an abiding love of country 
in the hearts of their youthful readers. 

Coffin Ions: had his home at 81 Dartmouth Street in 
the Back Bay district, and there often gave welcome 
to William Taylor Adams, another author held in grate- 
ful memory by an army of old boys. The son of a 
tavernkeeper and born in 1822, Adams was for twenty 
years a teacher in the public schools of Boston. Then 
he became a writer for boys under the pen-name of 
" Oliver Optic," and from 1853 until his death at the 
age of seventy-five his tales of travel and adventure 
followed each other in quick succession from the press, 
to meet with such eager welcome that a round million 
copies were sold during his life-time. But Adams, 
whose last home was at 1479 Dorchester Avenue, 
wrote only for a day, and, if compelled to make choice, 
one would gladly exchange all of his more than a hun- 
dred books for Lucy Larcom's brief autobiography en- 
titled "A New England Girlhood," of its kind one of 
the truest and sweetest bits of writing in the whole 
compass of our literature. 

Lucy Larcom, as we know, was born in 1824 in the 
old seaside town of Beverly, the daughter of a retired 

233 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

shipmaster, whose death compelled his widow to seek 
employment for their children in the mills of Lowell. 
There at the age of eleven Lucy Larcom began her 
battle with the world, tending bobbins from five in the 
morning until seven at night. Eleven years of labor 
in the cotton mills, and then an elder sister married 
and moved with her husband to the West. Lucy went 
with them, and for two years taught a log-cabin school 
on the prairies of Illinois. Then, by teaching lower 
classes to pay her tuition, she worked her way through 
a seminary at Alton. Her three years' course ended 
she returned to Beverly and opened a small private 
school, but in 1854 became a member of the staff of 
Wheaton Seminary at Norton, where for eight years 
she led, to quote her own words, " a kind of cloistered 
life, with the world entirely shut out." She had begun 
to write while still a Lowell mill hand, and she had not 
been long at Norton before she gave to the world her 
" Hannah Binding Shoes," a sad but true and tender 
piece of verse, which won her instant recognition, and 
upon which now rests her surest claim to remembrance. 
Whittier was among the first to hail the new singer's 
advent, and between them sprang up a friendship 
which strengthened with the years, and ended only 

^34 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

with the elder poet's death. One incident illustrating 
the ease and freedom of this friendship Whittier was 
wont in his last days to gleefully relate to their mutual 
friends. It was when Miss Larcom had taken on the 
rounded proportions that come to many women with 
middle age, while AVhittier had grown old and feeble 
and slight of form. She was on a visit to Amesbury, 
and they were driving out together on her host's in- 
vitation. Horse and chaise had seen their best days, 
and the springs sagged heavily on Miss Larcom's side 
of the vehicle. They were descending a steep and 
stony hill, and Whittier, with waning confidence in his 
own horsemanship, was anxiously intent on the road 
and the reins. But Miss Larcom, absorbed by thoughts 
of a future life, talked i)lacidly on, wholly unconscious 
of her companion's fears, until he turned upon her 
suddenly and exclaimed: "Lucy, if thee don't keep 
still thee will get to heaven before thee wants to." 
Miss Larcom's eyes opened wide at this interruption, 
but there was a twinkle in those of Whittier, and a lull 
in the conversation that lasted until horse and chaise 
reached in safety a level stretch of road. 

Miss Larcom left Norton in 1862 to devote herself 
wholly to literature, and soon became a regular con- 

235 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

tributor to the "Atlantic ^Monthly" and other leading 
periodicals of the time. For several years following 
1865 she was one of the editors of " Our Young Folks," 
and to its columns she contributed much of her best 
work in prose and verse. The most notable fruits of 
her last days were " A New England Girlhood " and a 
majority of the religious poems which now fill a large 
space in her collected works. When physical infirmity 
came upon her and she was unable longer to labor with 
her pen, she was induced by Whittier to accept help. 
"Don't be foolish," said this faithful friend. "Thee 
will not and must not waste thy remaining strength in 
rebellion." It was finally arranged that she should 
accept an annual pension from a Quaker home in 
Philadelphia, to which were added contributions from 
old pupils and other friends whose loving ministry 
to her needs continued until the end. She died in 
Boston in April, 1893, her last home being at 214 
Columbus Avenue, but her burial took place in her 
native Beverly, and there she was laid to rest within 
sight and sound of the sea. 

A year after Lucy Larcom helped to start "Our 
Young Folks" on its prosperous way, William Dean 
Howells settled in Boston as assistant editor of the 

23G 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

"Atlantic Monthly." He was then in the morning of 
his many sided career as a man of letters. Born in 
Ohio in 1837, Mr. Howells while yet a boy began to 
learn the printer's trade in the office of the country 
newspaper published by his father, and at the age of 
twenty became local editor of the " Ohio State Journal " 
at Columbus. He read much in the scant leisure of 
a busy youth, and also found time for writing, his 
earliest work appearing in 1859 in a volume called 
"Poems of Two Friends." The other author was 
John James Piatt, who has since written many pleasing 
verses. The reward for a campaign life of Lincoln 
which Mr. Howells wrote in 1860 was an appointment 
as consul at Venice. There with his bride, a sister of 
the sculptor Mead, he spent four pleasant and profit- 
able years, and there, too, his aspirations for a literary 
career took definite shape. 

Returning to America in 1865 he secured a place as 
editorial writer on the "Nation" in New York, and 
sought a publisher for "Venetian Life," his first prose 
A\ork. This was rejected by James T. Fields, but a 
large part of it was afterwards printed as letters in a 
Boston newspaper, and finally its author with difficulty 
induced Houghton & Company to print an edition of 

237 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

fifteen hundred copies from type, which was then dis- 
tributed. The last copy was sold within a fortnight, 
and plates had to be made for a new edition. This 
success led Fields to discover a valuable ally in his re- 
jected contributor, and the latter was at once in\ited 
to become assistant editor of the " Atlantic," five years 
later assuming full charge of that magazine. Mean- 
while, Mr. Howells had published "Italian Journeys," 
and had set out to train his hand as a novelist. " Their 
Wedding Journey," given to the world in 1871, showed 
that he was feeling his way as a writer of fiction, and 
the delightful promise contained in this 'prentice work 
was confirmed during the next ten years by " A Chance 
Acquaintance," "A Foregone Conclusion," "A Counter- 
feit Presentment," " The Lady of the Aroostook," " The 
Undiscovered Country," "A Fearful Responsibility," 
"Dr. Breen's Practice" and "A Modern Instance," 
each remarkable for minute and faithful analysis of 
human nature and human life. 

Their author retired from the "Atlantic" in 1881, 
soon to return to the scene of his earlier labors in New 
York, and the story of his subsequent career is mainly 
written in his books. Three score and ten titles, com- 
prising almost every form of literary endeavor, now 

238 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

stand to his credit, and at sixty-seven he is still at work, 
with all the zeal and zest of youth, but with the added 
mellowness and gentleness which are at once the fruit 
and compensation of age. Mr. Howells, while still 
engaged in editorial work, lived first in C.'ambridgc and 
later at Belmont. Aften\'ard he dwelt in turn at 4 
Louisburg Square and at 302 Beacon Street, where he 
had Dr. Holmes for a neighbor. His last Boston home 
was at 184 Commonwealth Avenue. 

When Mr. Howells relinquished the editorship of 
the "Atlantic" he was succeeded in that post by 
Thomas Bailey Aldrich, another poet and novelist 
whom Boston claims as its own by right of adoption. 
Mr. Aldrich was born and passed his early youth in 
Portsmouth, but moved at the age of seventeen to New 
York, where for a dozen years he contributed poems 
and prose sketches to the daily and weekly press, be- 
coming at the same time the friend and comrade of the 
poets Stedman, Stoddard and Bayard Taylor. In 1866 
he settled in Boston and assumed the editorship of 
"Every Saturday " which post he held until 1874, and 
for nine years following 1881 he ser\'ed as editor of the 
"Atlantic Monthly." Since 1890 his time has been 
devoted to original work and to foreign travel, his 

239 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

journeys leading him to many lands and affording fresh 
material for essay and song. It is an act of presump- 
tion to assign any living man his rank or station, but 
it is not too much to say that what Maupassant 
was to French Mr. Aldrich is to American letters. 
His poetical and prose writings now fill eight volumes, 
and on their every page there is evident an exacting 
standard of craftsmanship, combined with delicacy of 
touch and an original and individual charm. Though 
wholly delightful both in his short and longer fiction, 
he is at his best in his graver verse, and certain of his 
sonnets yield a glow and thrill commanded only by 
the lyric poet in his rarest moods. 

Mr. Aldrich has been a man of many homes. He 
dwelt upon his first coming to Boston at 84 Pinckney 
Street, where he and his wife "set up housekeeping 
in the light of their honeymoon," and where were writ- 
ten the "Story of a Bad Boy" and other of his early 
books. Then for ten years following 1871 he lived at 
131 Charles Street. His home since 1884 has been a 
noble mansion at 59 Mt. Vernon Street, upon the highest 
point of Beacon Hill, just as it begins to slope down- 
w^ard toward the west. The rooms of this house are 
all spacious, above stairs as well as below, and are 

240 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER TIME 

furnished apparently for use and comfort, not for use- 
less display. Ample, airy and comfortable, it is the 
ideal home of the man of letters. Mr. Aldrich has also 
a country home at Ponkapog, a secluded place twelve 
miles away behind the Blue Hills, and there he passes 
much of his time. "Solitude," he writes, "is the chief 
staple of Ponkapog. The nearest railway station 
(Heaven be praised!) is two miles distant, and the 
seclusion is without a flaw. Ponkapog has one mail 
a day; two would render it uninhabitable." 

One other author claims a place in this chronicle of 
literary Boston — an author with a career whose be- 
ginning was as romantic as its end was pathetic. Born 
in Ireland in 1844, John Boyle O'Reilly wrote for and 
set type on an Irish newspaper in boyhood, and at nine- 
teen, in a moment of capricious daring, enlisted in the 
British army. While serving as a private in the " Prince 
of Wales's Own," the famous Tenth Hussars, then 
stationed in Ireland, he was induced to join in a Fenian 
plot to turn the army against the crown. Detection 
was followed by conviction and sentence, first to death, 
then to life imprisonment, and finally to twenty years 
of penal servitude in Australia. But soon, by the aid 
of a few friends, a conspiracy was successfully formed 

241 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

to promote his escape. He fled from the penal colony, 
and, expecting to be picked up by an American whaler, 
took to the ocean in an open boat. The ship sighted 
him, but passed by. Another, guided by a more hu- 
mane hand, found him drifting half dead, and concealed 
him so that when a British cutter searched the American 
a hat tossing about on the sea was accepted as evidence 
that the fugitive had leaped to death to avoid capture. 
O'Reilly's first friend in the United States was 
Horace Greeley. Penniless, without acquaintances, 
seeking only employment, he carried to the great editor 
one of his poems, "The Amber Whale," a ballad of 
uncommon power and beauty which he had written in 
prison. It was printed and paid for, and, followed by 
other of his best narrative poems, opened the way to a 
career rich in promise and performance. In 1870 he 
secured a place on the staff of the Boston "Pilot," of 
which a few years later he became the principal pro- 
prietor, and, fixing his residence at 34 Winthrop Street 
in the Charlestown district, poured forth a steady 
stream of prose and verse until in 1890 his life was 
ended by an accidental overdose of chloral. Though 
much that came from O'Reilly's pen was ephemeral, 
many of his poems are charged with a splendid hu- 

24:^ 



THE BOSTON OF A LATER T I .M E 

inanity and will live as long as the language in which 
they are written. The man, however, was greater 
than his work, and the memory of him that endures is 
that of a fine intrepid spirit who bowed alone to death. 



243 



Chapter IX 
The Land of the Pilgrims 

Sea and land were flooded with the sunshine of a 
perfect June morning when the writer made his first 
visit to Plymouth, richest in historic associations, and, 
in its quiet way, one of the most beautiful of New World 
towns. Plymouth lies on the slopes of several hills 
reaching down to the shores of a land-locked bay, and 
many a noble elm and linden shade streets whose names 
serve to perpetuate the memory of the time, nigh three 
centuries ago, when, amid toil and hardship, the making 
of a nation began. Leyden Street, oldest of Plymouth 
thoroughfares, recalls the town in Holland which af- 
forded the Pilgrims an asylum when they first fled from 
England; another street bears the name of the vessel 
which brought them to America, and a third that of the 
Indian chief Massasoit, their steadfast ally and friend. 

The landmarks which draw an ever lengthening 
procession of visitors to Plymouth are all within the 
compass of an hour's ramble. North Street, running 
parallel with I.eyden, leads to Plymouth Rock, formerly 

244 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 



on the water's edge but now several rods from the shore 
and shielded by a granite canopy. Close by are Pil- 
grim TSIiarf and Cole's Hill, wiiere the first houses of 
the colonists were set up, and where were buried those 
w^ho died in the first disastrous winter, the ground above 
their graves being ploughed and sown by the surA-ivors, 
in order to conceal from the Indians the large number 
who had fallen. Reverent hands in a later time have 
smoothed down and swarded the slope of Cole's Hill, 
and a small park now crowns its brow. Ley den Street 
terminates at its western end in Town Square, a small 
open space shaded by elms, which guards the site of 
the first meeting house, and is flanked by Burial Hill, 
where are the graves of the early settlers, among them 
that of John Rowland, the last to die of all the goodly 
company who crossed in the "Mayflower." The vis- 
itor, however, comes in closest touch with the Pilcrrims 
when idling over the collection of antiquities housed in 
Pilgrim Hall in Court Street, w here one can study prints 
and paintings without number, and, more interesting 
still, the svv'ord of doughty Miles Standish, a deed writ- 
ten by John Alden, and the bones of the Indian sachem 
lyanough, who, Winslow tells us, " was very personable, 
gentle, courteous, and fair-conditioned; indeed, not like 
a savage, save for his attire." 

245 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Many of the old houses of Plymouth have interesting 
histories, some of them reaching back into the century 
before the last, and in one of them, a venerable mansion 
known as the Winslow House, Ralph Waldo Emerson 
wooed and wedded his second wife. But the Plymouth 
landmark of greatest interest to the literary pilgrim is 
the Pilgrim Book Store, occupying that comer of Ley- 
den Street where once stood the house in which for 
many years William Bradford wrought upon his " His- 
tory of Plymouth Plantation," one of the earliest pieces 
of writing done in New England. Than he no man 
was better fitted for such a task, for he had been with 
the Pilgrims in Holland and long presided over their 
colony in the new world. Bradford's book, begun in 
1630 and completed in 1650, is clothed in sturdy and 
often simply eloquent English, and is the foundation 
upon which all succeeding historians have based their 
accounts of the Plymouth colony; yet to a majority of 
people the history of his manuscript is more interesting 
than anything it contains. Morton, Prince and Hut- 
chinson made generous use of it in writing their his- 
tories, but during the Revolution it disappeared from 
the library Prince had formed in the tower of the Old 
South Church, in Boston, and it remained undiscovered 

246 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 

until, after the lapse of seventy years, the search of an 
American scholar brought it to light in Fulham Library, 
the rich collection belonging to the Bishop of London. 
Permission was at once given to copy and print the 
manuscript, and finally in 1897 the late Bishop Creigh- 
ton generously surrendered it to the keeping of the 
governor of ^lassachusetts. 

Bradford in a memorable passage of his long lost 
and now recovered history bewails the tendency early 
displayed by the Plymouth settlers to forsake the parent 
town and spread out over the hills and dales in their 
rear. The earliest of these migrations, which the 
worthy governor feared Avould be " ye ruin of New 
England," resulted in the founding of Duxbury at the 
northern end of Plymouth bay. Miles Standish and 
John Alden were among the first settlers in Duxbury, 
and so, by reason of its association with one of the 
most widely read of American poems, the old town 
claims a place in this chronicle. When the Pilgrims 
returned from Holland to England on their way to 
America a curious throng of spectators greeted their 
arrival at Southampton. One of the throng was John 
Alden, a sturdy youth, who coming to the wharf to 
while away an idle hour, was instantly won by the 

247 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

beauty of a maiden, Priscilla Mullens, who marched 
beside her father among the Pilgrims. 

Young Alden, with eyes on the maid, followed the 
strangers to the Southampton dockyard, where he 
learned that they were bound for America. He sought 
out the leader of the band and applied for membership, 
saying he wished to accompany the Pilgrims across 
seas, and was willing to work his passage. He was 
accepted, helped to place the "Mayflower" in readiness 
for her voyage, and in due time sailed with the Pilgrims 
for Plymouth. The rest of the story Longfellow has 
told in "The Courtship of Miles Standish," a story 

"Old and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful al- 
ways. 
Love immortal and young in the endless succession 
of lovers." 

John Alden and Priscilla Mullens were married in 
the spring of 1621, and, after dwelling several years in 
Plymouth, removed to Duxbury, there to pass the re- 
mainder of their days. Their first home in the new 
town was destroyed by fire, but a second house built for 
them in 1053 by one of their sons yet stands not far 
from the Duxbury railway station. On the slope of 
Captain's Hill, in another part of the town, one comes 

248 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 

upon a quaint, picturesque structure, known as the 
Standisli Cottage, and containing, it is believed, some 
of the materials of Standish's own house. Tradition 
has it that Standisli takes his rest in the oldest of Dux- 
bury burying grounds, and there also are the graves of 
John and Priscilla Alden. 

The town of Marshfield, which adjoins Duxbury on 
the north, was first settled in 1632 by Edward Winslow, 
third governor of Plymouth Colony, who called his new 
estate Carcswell in memory of the home he had left 
behind him in England. The years long ago claimed 
the house which Winslow built on his domain, but not 
far from its site stands the weather-beaten dwelling 
reared in 1699 by his grandson — a massive structure 
with four square rooms grouped around a central 
chimney. Heavy oaken timbers show in each corner 
and across the ceilings, and there are huge fireplaces 
with hand-wrought wooden panels above them and 
cupboards on cither side. The old house is well worth 
a visit, for there in the time of its builder, Isaac AVins- 
low, who like his grandfather was a man of pith and 
quality, often gathered the leading spirits of the Ply- 
mouth Colony, while the road that runs beside it leads 
to the many-acred estate which was long the property 
and abiding-place of Daniel Webster. 

249 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

It was in 1824 that Webster, driving with his wife 
from Cape Cod to Boston, halted for the night at the 
home of Captain John Thomas, the owner of a well 
tended farm, three miles from the village of jNIarshfield 
and within sight of the sea. The beauty of the situa- 
tion delighted him, and before he took his departure 
in the morning an arrangement was made whereby for 
seven years the members of the Webster family passed 
their summers by the Marshfield shore as the guests of 
Captain Thomas. In 1831 Webster bought the farm, 
stipulating that the Thomas family should live there as 
before, and with his wife and children came and went 
at pleasure, until in 1837 the death of Captain Thomas 
put an end to the delightful relations existing between 
the two families. After that Webster enlarged the 
house into a structure of thirty rooms, and, hiring an 
overseer, added to the farm until he owned upward of 
fifteen hundred acres. 

The dining and living room in the reconstructed 
house was a spacious and cheerful apartment, but its 
finest room was the library, vaulted and lighted by 
(iotliic windows filled with stained glass. The bed- 
rooms had each a distinctive name — the Star Cham- 
ber, the Castrum, the Red Room, the Blue Room and 

250 



THE LAND OF THE P I L G R I ^I S 



the Pink Room. Above the mantel of the Pink Room, 
long occupied by Webster, was an oil portrait of the 
faithful colored woman who lived for many years in 
his family, while in the Castrum hung the arms of 
Major Edward and Colonel Fletcher Webster, the lat- 
ter killed at Bull Run. In 1878 the house, then occu- 
pied by the widow of Fletcher Webster, was destroyed 
by fire, but another was built on the site, and, with a 
large part of the estate, is now owned and occupied by 
a wealthy Boston merchant, proud of its history and 
zealous in its care and preservation. 

The new house holds many intimate mementoes of 
Webster, and on the lawn before it stands two weeping 
elms planted by him in 1848 in memory of his children, 
Edward and Julia, who both lay dead in Boston at the 
same time. A little to the north of the house is a small 
trout pond, with grass growing down to its margin, and 
thence it is a short walk to the brow of Black Hill, 
Webster's favorite lookout, whence, on a clear day, can 
be seen the whole expanse of the great farm, the long 
reach of coast, and the sea stretching out to the horizon 
line, with white sails shimmering in the sunshine. 
Again, a grass-grown lane leads from the house to the 
old Burj'ing Hill of Marshfield, where Webster takes 

251 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

his rest, with his children and his children's children 
around him. Several generations of Winslows sleep 
in the same plot, and there, too, is the grave of the 
sweet singer, Adelaide Pliillips, who passed her last 
years in Marshfield. 

What with its hills and meadows, its lake and sands, 
and its tonic breezes from Plymouth Bay, Webster 
loved his home by the sea as he did no other spot save 
his birthplace. The life which he led there was that 
of the farmer, the fisherman and the boon companion. 
Politics was the one subject tabooed at Marshfield, and 
we are told that if any one mentioned public affairs in 
its master's presence his brow darkened on the instant. 
Farming, fishing and the care of stock, these were his 
favorite pursuits and themes, and he knew every one 
of his cattle by name as well as he knew the names of 
his fellow senators. Nor in his dress about home could 
he be distinguished from liis neighbors. Rarely did he 
boast a collar; a worn slouched hat covered his head, 
and his trousers were always tucked inside his boots. 
Children ran instinctively into his arms, and, with those 
of a larger growth, had ever a hearty welcome and full 
run of the Webster house. And so his humble neigh- 
bors grew to know and love him as a friend, and when 

252 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 

he died in the late October of 185'i, one unknown man, 
in rustic garb, standing beside his coffin, could say, 
softly, reverently and as if to himself, " Daniel Webster, 
the world without you will seem lonesome." Than 
this, no finer, tenderer tribute was ever paid to the 
great man's memory. 

A third of the migrations from Plymouth mourned 
by Bradford led to the settlement in 1633 of the town 
of Scituate, which adjoins Marshfield on the north. 
One of the founders of Scituate was Walter Wood- 
worth, whose farm, close by the present railway station, 
has ever since remained in the possession of his de- 
scendants. There in 1785 a child was born who long 
afterw^ard was to render his boyhood home immortal 
by writing "The Old Oaken Bucket." The youngest 
son of a veteran of the Revolution, Samuel Woodworth 
chose in youth the trade of printer and served a long 
apprenticeship under Benjamin Russell, then editor of 
the "Columbian Centinel" in Boston, meanwhile con- 
tributing poetry to the periodicals of that time under 
the signature of Selim, a name by which in after life he 
was known to his intimates and friends. His appren- 
ticeship ended, Woodworth settled in New York, wrote 
a number of now forgotten novels, plays and operas, 

253 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

successively founded half a dozen short-lived journals, 
and in 1823 joined with George P. Morris in the es- 
tablishment of the New York "Mirror." 

It was six years before his association with Morris, 
however, that Woodworth wrote the song that has 
moved the hearts of three generations. He was living 
then in Duane Street, New York, and had his office 
at the foot of Wall Street. Walking home to dinner on 
a sultry August noontide, he drank a glass of water 
while heated with the exercise, and exclaimed, as he 
replaced the glass on the table: "That is refreshing, 
but more refreshing on this hot day would be a good, 
long draught from the old oaken bucket I left hanging 
in my father's well at home." Hearing this, his wife 
asked, "Selim, why wouldn't that be a pretty subject 
for a poem ? " The poet took the hint, and, under the 
inspiration of the moment and at a single sitting, 
penned the lines of "The Old Oaken Bucket." 

The visitor to Scituate, where in a later time another 
poet, Thomas William Parsons, ended his days, finds 
the " orchard, the meadow and the deep-tangled wild- 
wood" celebrated by Woodworth little altered by the 
years. The cot has disappeared, and a modern cot- 
tage stands near its site, while the bucket and the 

25i 



THE L A N D O F THE PILGRIMS 

sweep long ago succumbed to wear and use; hut there 
is a new sweep of the same pattern, and the old well 
still yields water as pure and fresh as when the poet 
sang its praises. Woodworth visited his early home 
but twice after writing "The Old Oaken Bucket," 
and now takes his rest beside another sea. He died in 
IS-i^, and his widow spent the remainder of her days 
under the roof-tree of a son in San Francisco. When 
she, too, died, the son had the remains of his father 
removed from New York and placed by her side in 
Laurel Hill Cemetery, San Francisco, so that in death 
they "might not be divided." 

When the writer left Scituate behind him he shaped 
his return to Boston by way of Hingham, Quincy, 
Milton, Dedham and West Roxbury, all rich in his- 
toric and literary memories. Hingham, called after 
the English home of its founders, is one of the loveliest 
of towns, and boasts the oldest and quaintest meeting- 
house in the land. This venerable church, sometimes 
called the Ship, stands on the slope of a hill, whose 
brow was formerly crowned by a fort, the site of which 
can still be traced among the graves of the cemetery 
that has long occupied the spot. It was built in 1681, 
and ever since has been occupied by the same church 

S55 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

organization. But the item of Hingham liistory of 
most interest to the literary pilgrim is the fact that the 
old town was the birthplace and boyhood home of 
Richard Henry Stoddard. 

His father, a master mariner, was lost at sea in 1828, 
and young Stoddard passed his early years in the house 
of his grandfather, a kindly, gentle-hearted old man to 
whom the poet makes loving reference in his auto- 
biography. "I remember," he writes, "the cove 
through which the tide rushed to and fro twice a day. 
Pond lilies grew in the marshes near its banks. On 
the lower side of the cove, or the stream which emptied 
into it, stood my grandfather's house, the street running 
up and down the gentle slopes of the banks, and lined 
on either side with gardens, in which I remember the 
tall poles festooned with bean-vines and the rows of 
corn almost as tall. The front of my grandfather's 
house was at the level of the street, but the back dropped 
downward two stories on the slope toward the cove. 
In winter, when the ice was tliick, my grandfather often 
carried me across the frozen cove and up the hill on the 
opposite shore, where slept the ' rude forefathers of the 
hamlet,' most of them under tottering headstones. 
That old cemetery seemed to be looked forward to as 

256 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 



the certain and probably sudden home of all of us, and 
I was not excluded from the general gathering, as I 
learned one day when I was sick and heard instructions 
to hang a handkerchief in the window to inform my 
grandfather when I had died. There was no special 
arransement for notifying the dear old man that I still 
lived; dying seemed to be the most laudable industry 
of the time." 

There is a touch of grim humor in these closing 
words, and, truth to tell, the childhood of Stoddard was 
a troubled and unhappy one. It came to an end in 
New York, whence, when he was ten years old, his 
mother moved with her second husband. There the 
growing lad mastered the trade of iron molding, read 
and wrote in his leisure hours, and in 1849 published 
his first volume of verse. Three years later he became 
a regular contributor to the press, having in the mean- 
while married Elizabeth Barstow, a gifted writer of 
poems and novels; and thereafter his life was that of a 
hard-working journalist and man of letters. Though 
he had a wide scope, and left a great mass of prose be- 
hind him, Stoddard's songs give perhaps the best meas- 
ure of his gift. Larger sweep and power and a .stronger 
appeal to popular sentiment have been exercised by 

•257 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

other of our poets, but none has surpassed him in the 
production of sheerly exquisite poetry. Had he never 
written anything save his noble ode on the death of 
Ivincohi he would be sure of lasting remembrance. 
Best of all, when he died in 1903, he left to his friends 
a legacy as precious as his verse in the memory of 
one who was 

" Gentle, never schooled, yet learned. 
Full of noble device, of all sorts 
Enchantingly beloved." 

Two weather-beaten houses standing close together 
at the corner of Independence Street and Franklin 
Avenue, in the old town of Quincy, have an abiding 
interest for every lover of his country's past, for one 
was the birthplace of John Adams and the other that 
of his hardly less illustrious son. A more imposing 
house nearer the center of the town was the home of 
John Adams from 1787 until his death. This house, 
the country-seat in an earlier time of Leonard Vassall, 
a wealthy royalist whose property was sequestered in the 
Revolution, is now occupied by Brooks Adams, great- 
grandson of the second President. There John Adams 
passed the last of his more than ninety years, cheered 
by the love of a grateful people, and keeping until the 

258 



i 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 



end the saving gift of humor. Daniel Webster de- 
lighted to tell of a visit made to him a few montlis 
before his death. The venerable man received Web- 
ster with cordiality, and thanked him for coming to 
see him. He was lying in bed, supported by pillows, 
and drawing his breath with much difficulty. He 
seemed to pump his words, said Webster, from a great 
depth, and spoke in short sentences. "How are you, 
Mr. Adams?" inquired his visitor. "Feeble and 
nearly worn out," was the reply. "The old tenement 
is in a state of dilapidation, and from what I can judge 
of the intentions of the landlord, he is not likely to lay 
out anything more in repairs." 

When John Adams died in 1826, he bequeathed to 
the town of Quincy certain granite quarries with which 
to build a " temple " to receive his remains. A church, 
locally known as the Granite Temple, was erected in 
1828, in obedience to this injunction, and in its base- 
ment are the tombs of Adams and his son and their 
wives. John Quincy Adams, however, was first laid 
to rest in an ancient burial garth, across the way from 
the Granite Temple, where arc the graves of Henry 
Adams, founder of the Adams family in America; of 
John Hancock, father of the more famous bearer of 

259 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

that name, and of Edmund Quincy, first of his hne in 
New England, who came to Boston in 1633, and a 
Httle later helped to found the settlement from which 
grew the town now called after his name. 

The old Quincy mansion in Hancock Street, facing 
Bridge Street, contains some part of the house built 
about 1634 by Edmund Quincy, and itself has a history 
of nearly two hundred years. Here was born Dorothy 
Quincy, the original of Dr. Holmes's "Dorothy Q.," 
whose granddaughter was the mother of the poet ; and 
here lived that other Dorothy Quincy, a descendant of 
the first, who became the wife of John Hancock after 
she had said nay to the eager wooing of Aaron Burr. 
The wife of Judge Edmund Quincy, who flourished in 
the opening years of the eighteenth century, also bore 
the name of Dorothy, and besides was the sister of 
Henry Flynt, New England's earliest humorist, for 
whom she made the Quincy house larger by a study 
and chamber, so that he might enjoy his pipe and 
toddy with less scandal to her friends. Flynt, born at 
Dorchester in 1675 was graduated at Harvard in 1693, 
and for the long period of fifty-five years was a tutor 
in that institution. He never married, and for many 
years spent his vacations under his sister's roof in 

260 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 

Quiiicy. He had wit and liuraor, and stories of his 
quain ways and words filled a large place in the small 
talk of his time. Melancholy, however, mingled with 
the hghter vein in liis nature, and here and there in 
his diary one finds him seeking a cause for the periods 
of depression which often made him their victim. " I 
believe," he wrote in 1714, "I have been of late hurt by 
much smoking tobacco, two pipes in forenoon, and 
two or three in afternoon, and four or five at night. 
This were surely noxious to melancholy and erring 
bodily. Moderation in this and moderate exercise are 
necessary for me. I shall not be moderate in smoke 
unless I wholly omit it in forenoon." An excellent 
resolution, but, one fears, only made to be broken. 
Had they lived in the same time Tutor Flynt would 
have found a source of endless delight in the doings oi 
Thomas Morton, the most singular and, one is tempted 
to add, the most interesting figure in early New Eng- 
land liistory, whose erstwhile home w^as on the level 
summit of the hill in Quincy still called Mt. Wollaston. 
It was in the summer of 1625, five years after the landing 
of the Pilgrims, that a certain Captain Wollaston came 
from England, and with three or four fellow adven- 
turers and a score of bond servants planted a settlement 

261 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

on the hill that bears his name. One of his compan- 
ions was Thomas Morton, a London lawyer of convi- 
vial temper but at sharp odds with fortune and morality. 
When Wollaston, speedily convinced that little profit 
was to be hoped for out of New England, set sail for 
Virginia, taking with him a majority of the bond ser- 
vants, Morton made himself head of the settlement, and, 
with the roistering crew that followed his lead, inau- 
gurated a series of revels that shocked and saddened the 
worthy settlers of Plymouth. They changed the name 
of the place to Merry Mount, and, Bradford tells us, 
"also set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing and 
frisking about it, like so many fairies, or furies rather." 
Worse still, the men of Merry Mount sold arms and 
ammunition to the Indians, and when news of their evil 
practices reached Plymouth resolve was taken to make 
short work of the roisterers. Miles Standish, set on 
their track with a platoon of his muskeeters, arrested 
Morton, dispersed his crew, and put an end to the 
reign of misrule which in later days furnished a theme 
for the pens of Hawthorne and Motley. 

Morton, however, lingered in the neighborhood, and, 
soon coming into conflict with the rulers of the newly 
planted colony of Massachusetts Bay, he was by them 

2G2 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRl^CS 

set in the stocks and finally shipped back to England. 
There he sought to revenge himself upon his enemies 
by petitioning the king in council to vacate the Massa- 
chusetts charter, a move which was thwarted only by 
the most strenuous exertions of the friends of the colony; 
and also wrote and published his "New English Ca- 
naan," a curious and amusing book made up in about 
equal measure of rose-colored descriptions of the New 
England country and of witty lampoons upon the men 
who had banished him. Standish, Endicott and Win- 
throp figure in its pages as Shrimp, Littleworth and 
Temperwell, but the author's pen is most caustic when 
describing the state with which Endicott, "a great 
swelling fellow," sought to surround himself in primi- 
tive New England. " To add a majesty, as he thought, 
to his new assumed dignity," writes Morton, " he caused 
the patent of Massachusetts, new brought into the land, 
to be carried where he went in his progress to and fro, 
as an emblem of his authority ; which the vulgar people 
not acquainted with, thought it to be some instrument 
of music locked up in that covered case, and thought 
this man of littleworth had been a fiddler." 

Finally in 1643 Morton, now an aging man, a second 
time made his way to New England, but only to be 

263 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

jailed for a year and then banished by the magistrates 
of Boston. Thus summarily dealt with, he left for the 
last time the province of Massachusetts Bay, and sought 
refuge in that part of the Maine wilderness where now 
stands the town of York. There, about the year 1G48, 
this once witty and scholarly man, able to handle with 
equal deftness fiddle-bow or fowling-piece, died a crazy 
and despised outcast. Yet the whirligig of time has 
revenged Morton upon one of his dearest foes. Priscilla 
Mullens rejected the suit of Miles Standish to give her 
hand to John Alden. A granddaughter of this union 
in 1688 married one Joseph Adams, and their descen- 
dants at the end of another century became the owners 
of Mt. Wollaston, where one of them now resides, close 
to the site of Morton's May-pole. And so, while the 
captain of Plymouth expelled from his home the first 
master of Merry Mount, the present owner traces a 
descent from Standish's successful rival for a fair 
woman's hand. 

Thomas Hutchinson, last royal governor of Massa- 
chusetts, once had his country-seat in Milton, and 
thence, in June, 1774, set out on the voyage to England 
from which he was never to return; while Dedham was 
the birthplace and lifelong home of Fisher Ames, whose 

204 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 

gift of eloquent speech made him a great figure in the 
politics of his time. Sprung from old Puritan stock, 
conspicuous on the father's side for a love of learning 
and for scientific tastes, Ames served eight years in the 
House oi Representatives. He was from the first one 
of the Federalist leaders in that body, but his reputation 
chiefly rests on the speech which, in 179G, turned the 
scales in favor of the wise but unpopular treaty John 
Jay had negotiated with England, and secured the 
appropriation by which it was put into operation. 
Suffering from the malady which later brought him to 
his grave, Ames was scarcely able to talk or stand 
when he began, but gathered strength as he went on 
for one of the most effective speeches ever made in 
either branch of Congress. 

One of those who heard it and was moved to enthu- 
siasm by its impressive blending of argument and elo- 
quence was John Adams, then Vice-President. " Judge 
Iredell and I happened to sit together," Adams wrote 
to his wife. " Our feelings beat in unison. ' My God! 
how great he is,' says Iredell; 'how great he has been!* 
'Noble!' said I. After some time Iredell breaks out: 
'Bless my stars, I never heard anything so great since 
I was bom!' 'Divine,' said I. Thus we went on 

S65 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

with our interjections, not to say tears, to the end. 
Tears enough were shed. Not a dry eye, I beUeve, in 
the house, except some of the jackasses who had oc- 
casioned the necessity of the oratory. These attempted 
to laugh, but their visages 'grinned horrible, ghastly 
smiles.' They smiled like Foulon's son-in-law when 
they made him kiss his father's dead and bleeding 
head." The speech which so moved Adams and Ire- 
dell won the day for a measure that had seemed fore- 
doomed to defeat. But its delivery was Ames' last 
important public service. He left Congress in 1797, 
and passed his closing years in invalid retirement, 
dying in 1808 at the age of fifty. His house stood 
aforetime in High Street, Dedham, but is now removed 
to River Place, and with enlargements and improve- 
ments has become the home of Frederick J. Stimson. 
George Horatio Derby, remembered under his pen- 
name of John Phoenix as one of the drollest of our 
early humorists, was also a native of Dedham. Born 
in 1823, Derby was graduated at West Point in 1846, 
and served with distinction in the Mexican War, being 
severely wounded at the battle of Cerro Gordo. Ivater 
he had a hand in important explorations of the North- 
west and Pacific coast, finally attaining the rank of 

2()G 



( 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 

captain of engineers. Derby, who lived a life as gen- 
uinely comic as that of Charles Lamb and quite as 
gentle, wrote his humor for his fellow officers and for 
the incidental society which assembled around isolated 
army posts. Instinct with satire and ingrained wit, 
it gave its author when collected in " Phoenxiana " and 
the " Squibob Papers " a popularity that has endured 
to the present time. A droll rather than a humorist, 
he was, however, more content to draw the immoderate 
laugh of his hearers than to wait for the verdict of 
posterity, and his fantastic excesses are apt to tire 
many of his later readers. 

Still Derby could extract fun from the most unprom- 
ising subjects; his military superiors were again and 
again called upon to condone the mirth-tipped shafts 
he aimed at them, and several papers from his hand 
are yet on file in the War Department at Wasliington 
which would have brought severe reprimand and per- 
haps loss of commission to any other than this ]Merry 
Andrew among soldiers. Jefferson Davis, while Sec- 
retary of War, was so angered at a communication 
from Derby concerning new uniforms and especially a 
new style of buttons that he marked him for a court- 
martial. But the humorist's letter was so superlatively 

267 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



ridiculous that Davis, it is said, was induced by Presi- 
dent Pierce not to pursue the matter, lest the whole 
service should be brought into ridicule in the news- 
papers. Derby died in 1861 from the effects of a sun- 
stroke received while he was superintending the erec- 
tion of lighthouses in the South. 

The last halt in the pilgrimage here recorded was at 
West Roxbury, where Theodore Parker hved and la- 
bored during his first years in the ministry, and Avhere 
Brook Farm ran its brief but memorable career. The 
old meeting-house in which Parker preached is still 
standing in Centre Street, though long unused and 
dismantled, and in the same thoroughfare one finds 
the house to which he brought his bride, now occupied, 
such are the changes that come with the years, as the 
rectory of a Catholic church. Perhaps a mile away, 
in another part of the town, is the farm where Avas 
set afoot the experiment of Brook Farm. 

It was in 1840 that George Ripley, with the belief 
strong within him that competition was the great evil 
of life, gave up his Boston pastorate to form a commu- 
nity which, to quote his own words, should "combine 
the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the 
same individual; guarantee the highest mental freedom 

208 



T II E LAND OF THE P I L (. R I M S 

by providing all with labor adapted to their tastes and 
talents, and securing to them the fruits of their indus- 
try'; do away with the necessity of menial services by 
opening the benefits of education and the profits of 
labor to all;" and so "prepare a society of liberal, in- 
telligent and cultivated persons, whose relations with 
each other would permit a more wholesome and simple 
life than can be led amidst the pressure of our compe- 
titive institutions." Thus Ripley wrote to Emerson in 
November, IS^O. "To accomplish these objects," he 
added, "we propose to take a small tract of land wliich, 
under skilful husbandry, uniting the garden and the 
farm, will be adequate to the subsistence of the fam- 
ilies; and to connect with this a school or college, from 
the first rudiments to the highest culture." 

Though Emerson, accepting the shrewd advice of 
one of his farmer neighbors in Concord, declined to 
join the projected community, Ripley was not dismayed 
at his friend's refusal, and a little later bought a farm 
in West Roxbury, where he and his Avife had boarded 
the previous summer, and made himself responsible 
for its management. The farm in question consisted 
of about two hundred acres and took its name from a 
small brook which ran through it into the Charles 

209 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

River. A roomy house and barn were on the land, and 
close at hand was a plot of pine woods many acres in 
extent. Ripley with his wife and sister went to live 
there early in April, 1841, and before the month's end 
some fifteen other persons became residents at the farm. 
One of these was Nathaniel Hawthorne, who a few 
weeks later described the life there in a letter to his 
sister. " Tliis is one of the most beautiful places I ever 
saw in my life," he wrote, "and as secluded as if it 
were a hundred miles from any city or village. There 
are woods in which we ramble all day without meeting 
anybody or scarcely seeing a house. Our house stands 
apart from the main road, so that we are not troubled 
with passengers looking at us. Once in a while we 
have a transcendental visitor, such as Mr. Alcott; but 
generally we pass whole days without seeing a single 
face, save those of the brethren. The whole fraternity 
eat together; and such a delectable way of life has 
never been seen on earth since the days of the early 
Christians. "We get up at half-past four, breakfast at 
six, dine at half-past twelve, and go to bed at nine." 

Such was Brook Farm in its first days. Ripley con- 
tinued for several months to ov.n and manage the farm, 
and it was not until November, 1841, that the Brook 

270 



THE LAM) OF THE PILGRIMS 

Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education, a joint 
stock company, came formally into existence. Ripley, 
under the new order of things, was made chairman of 
the committee of general direction, and thus the virtual 
head of the association, while ^Nlrs. Hipley had cliarge 
of education, Hawthorne of the finances, and "William 
B. Allen of agriculture. Charles A. Dana served as 
recording secretary'. The twenty-four shares of stock 
then assigned had a value of $500 each, and every 
holder of one or more shares was considered a member 
of the association, and given a voice in the disposition 
of the funds. Every person resident at the farm was 
charged a uniform price for his board, and paid for 
his labor at a uniform rate, the end kept always in 
mind being to combine farming and a life close to 
nature with the best possible cultivation of the mental 
powers of the members and their children. " The ar- 
gument was," writes Dana, "that while anyone was 
pursuing philosophy and literature and philology and 
mathematics, he ought to work on the land, to cultivate 
the earth; and the man who did not work on the land 
could not have first-rate health. So, in order to reform 
society, in order to regenerate the world and to realize 
democracy in the social relations, they determined that 

271 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

their society should first pursue agriculture, wliich 
would give every man plenty of out-door labor in the 
free air, and at the same time the opportunity of study, 
of instruction, of becoming familiar with everything in 
literature and learning." 

Besides Ripley and Hawthorne a number of rare 
spirits Avere enlisted in this scheme for social and men- 
tal betterment. Ripley's wife was a woman of rounded 
education and his sister had been a successful teacher 
in Boston. Warren Burton and John S. D wight were 
graduates of Harvard and both had been settled over 
Unitarian parishes. George P. Bradford was also a 
Harvard graduate, while Dana had spent two years at 
that institution, and later was to become the foremost 
editor of his day. The student in the excellent schools 
conducted by the association also included a number 
of young men who afterward became widely known, 
among them George William Curtis, General Francis 
Channing Barlow and Father Isaac Hecker, long a 
leader in the Catholic Church and the organizer of its 
Paulist Fathers. And of visitors there was always a 
goodly and a motley throng, for Brook Farm from first 
to last was an object of wide interest and lively curiosity. 
Emerson's sympathy with the aims of the association 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 

seldom drew him personally within its borders, but 
Alcott and Lowell were frequent visitors, and so were 
Horace Greeley and Margaret Fuller, the last named 
often remaining for many days at a time. 

Members and visitors have alike borne witness to the 
prevailing spirit of cheerfulness which was, perhaps, 
the chief charm of life at Brook Farm. Labor, even 
of the hardest sort, was made a pastime and no one 
was kept for long at the same task. "There were 
never," writes George William Curtis, " such witty 
potato patches and sparkling cornfields. The weeds 
were scratched out of the ground to the music of Tenny- 
son or Browning, and the nooning was an hour as gay 
and bright as any brilliant midnight at Ambrose's," 
while every evening had its plans for mental stimulus 
and social diversion. "It is not too much to say," 
Dana long afterward wrote of his old home, "that 
every person who was at Brook Farm for any length of 
time has ever since looked back to it with a feeling of 
satisfaction. The healthy mixture of manual and in- 
tellectual labor, the kindly and unaffected social rela- 
tions, the absence of everything like assumption or 
servility, the amusements, the discussions, the friend- 
ships, the ideal and poetical atmosphere which gave a 

273 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

charm to life — all these continue to create a picture 
toward which the mind turns back with pleasure as to 
something distant and beautiful not elsewhere met 
with in the routine of this world." Hawthorne, la- 
menting the loss of his hard-earned dollars, was per- 
haps the only who left Brook Farm carrying bitter 
memories with him, and even he found there the ma- 
terial for one of his most powerful and compelling 
stories — "The Blithedale Romance." 

Five years Brook Farm ran its idyllic course, and 
then came the end. The financial problem was from 
the first a difficult one, for the undertaking was entered 
upon with insufficient capital and the outgo was nearly 
always greater than the income. Thus debt soon be- 
gan to accumulate, and when in 1846 fire destroyed a 
new building, on which there was no insurance and 
which was absolutely necessary to accommodate the 
large number in the community, no money could be 
raised to replace it and one by one the members went 
away to begin life again in new fields. Only Ripley, 
the founder, remained behind, and he but long enough 
to settle the affairs of the association, parting with the 
library he had been gathering for half a life-time in 
order to pay in full the last dollar due its creditors. 

274 



THE LAND OF THE PILGRIMS 

Since 1870 Brook Farm has been the INIartin Luther 
Home for German Orplians, supported by the German 
churches and lAitheran societies of New England, and 
there now remain but two of the half dozen buildings 
bought with the place or afterward reared by Ripley 
and his associates. One of these is the so-called 
Margaret Fuller Cottage, a picturesque four-gabled 
structure, which stands just without the shadow of a 
cloister of pines. A little way beyond it is Pulpit Rock, 
where, according to tradition, the Apostle Eliot used 
to preach to the Indians, and which, with the pond in 
the picnic ground below it, furnishes the scenery for 
the weird and melancholy chapter entitled " Midnight " 
in "The Blithedale Romance." The Charles River, 
in which the heroine of that gruesome tale met her fate, 
still winds its sluggish way through the meadows of 
Brook Farm, and the pine grove where the raasquera- 
ders sounded in Hawthorne's ear as if " Comus and his 
crew were holding their revels in one of its lonesome 
glades" is still used for the same purpose, though, in- 
stead of the picturesquely attired masqueraders of the 
bygone time, the summer wayfarer on the road now 
catches glimpses of ragged children brought from 
Boston slums to enjoy the privilege of a picnic day in 

275 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



the country. But it is not in the pine-fringed meadows 
of West Roxbury that Brook Farm is to be sought. 
" It hngers," instead, as George Wilham Curtis wrote 
in old age, " in the generous faith, the inextinguishable 
hope of humanity to which Brook Farm itself is but a 
beautiful and vanished mirage of the morning." 



876 



Chapter X 
A Winding Bay State Journey 

The first halts in the leisurely journey which carried 
the writer from Boston to the valley of the Connecticut 
were at the Medfords and Arlington. Medford was 
the birthplace of Lydia Maria Child, and West Med- 
ford was long the home of David Atwood Wasson. 
Some one has written that Wasson's life was always 
winter, and true it is that the obstacles fate threw in his 
way prevented the full fruition of his genius, yet there 
never was a braver seeker after truth, and the years 
are gradually awarding him a place, denied him in his 
lifetime, among the most independent and acute of 
American thinkers. 

Wasson was born in 1823 on a farm not far from 
Castine in Maine, and studied for a time at Bowdoin 
College, but left it to enter a law office. Then a copy 
of Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus" fell in his way, and, 
profoundly influenced by its teachings, he resolved 
to abandon the law for the ministry. Accordingly, he 
entered the theological seminary at Bangor, and soon 

277 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

after his graduation in 1851 accepted a call from a 
church in Groveland, Massachusetts. It was not long, 
however, before his boldness of thought and utterance 
brought him into suspicion with his fellow ministers, 
and a conference called for the purpose expelled him 
from the Congregational brotherhood. A third of his 
congregation still followed his lead and enabled him to 
establish an independent church, but the mental agita- 
tion attendant upon his trial ended in a serious nervous 
disorder, and for a dozen years he was little better than 
a helpless invalid. 

A voyage to Labrador in the summer of 1864 par- 
tially restored Wasson's health, and for several years, 
the best and most productive of his life, he was able 
to preach regularly and to write a few hours each day. 
Then, alas, came a sudden attack of pleurisy, and this 
changed ere long to chronic bronchitis. Worse still, 
in 1879, cataracts formed on both his eyes, and when 
they were operated on at the end of two years he was 
left nearly blind. Burdened by such heavy handicaps 
it is a cause for wonder that his literary output, slight 
though it was, should have reached its final bulk. His 
collected essays fill two goodly volumes and, covering 
as they do the widest possible range, give proof on every 

278 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

page of prodigious knowledge and the workings of a 
masterly mind. Yet all of Wasson's friends bear wit- 
ness that his written was never equal to his spoken 
word. "He must have been the finest talker of his 
time," writes Frank P. Stearns. " Carlyle could match 
him perhaps in quite a different manner; but I have 
never heard of any others. Like Carlyle he required 
suitable auditors to bring him forth at his best; but 
while Carlyle was mightiest when liis hearers were op- 
posed to him Wasson always needed a sympathetic 
audience. If he saw unfriendly faces about him his 
ideas became congealed and his discourse controver- 
sial. At other times it was like following the course of 
a great unknown river, full of grand views and .sur- 
prising discoveries. The finest rhetoric and even 
splendid oratory seemed poor compared with the plain 
statement of this unswerving seeker of the truth. He 
was in fact an American Dr. Johnson; and it is only a 
pity that he had not some Boswell of a friend who 
could have recorded liis wise sayings and valuable 
criticism of men and things." Wasson's last home, 
and the only one he ever owned, was a modest house 
yet standing at the corner of Prescott and Allston 
Streets in West Medford. He died in 1887, and is 
buried, as we know, at Concord. 

279 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



A shaded country road leads from West Medford 
to and across the Mystic and then onward to Arlington, 
long the home of John Townsend Trowbridge, one of 
the best beloved of our elder authors. New England, 
however, claims Mr. Trowbridge only by right of adop- 
tion. He was born in 1827 in what was then the wilder- 
ness of western New York, and composed his first 
verses while following the plough on his father's farm. 
The boy inherited the fine taste of his mother, a cul- 
tivated New England woman, and, though little in- 
terested in the studies his common school education 
offered him, hungered after languages and learned to 
read and translate French and German before he met 
a person who could speak either of them. When some 
verses of his on "The Tomb of Napoleon" were pub- 
lished in a Rochester newspaper he determined to be- 
come an author, and his twentieth birthday found him 
in New York battling almost against starvation for a 
foothold in letters. Once his funds sank so low that 
he was obliged to work in a pencil factory, where his 
pay was sure, but he struggled and hoped on, and at 
last his stories were sought by publishers. 

He had the while journeyed still further eastward, 
hoping that Boston would afford a better market for 



280 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

his wares, and since 1863 has had his home in Ariington. 
Assured success came with the pubUcation of his early 
stories, " Neighbor Jackwood " and " Cujo's Cave " 
and a volume of verse entitled "The Vagabonds and 
Other Poems." He was one of the first contributors 
to the "Atlantic Monthly," and when "Our Young 
Folks" was started he became its editor, conducting 
it for several years with skill and judgment, and writing 
for it his famous story for boys, "Jack Hazard." The 
instant and abounding popularity of this story decided 
Mr. Trowbridge to work further along the same line, 
and a majority of the five-and-forty volumes that now 
stand to his credit are books for young people, perhaps 
the best of their kind ever written in America. The 
success of his satisfying stories for boys has, indeed, 
temporarily eclipsed his reputation as a poet, yet his 
verse, which shows true and tender insight into the 
workings of the human heart, contains his best work 
and liis surest claim to enduring remembrance. 

Though Mr. Trowbridge has been a wide traveler 
in his later years, the place for which he cares the most 
is his Arlington home. Arlington, however, is a small 
town made up of plain people, and Mr. Trowbridge 
smiUngly confesses that he has more than once found 

281 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



himself a prophet without honor in his own country. 
The tax collector of the town, going his yearly rounds, 
once called on him, and in the course of conversation 
asked what he did for a living. The author said he 
wrote, and, after explaining that he was neither a 
bookkeeper or copyist, told his caller that he wrote 
books. "Well, now, I want to know! It's kind of 
curious I never heard of that. Got any of them 
about you ? " Mr. Trowbridge replied that he had 
some of them in the house, but did not keep a large 
supply on hand. " Well, you can get them, I sup- 
pose?" was the next remark. Mr. Trowbridge said 
that he could, and was given an order on the spot. 
" Send me down the handsomest copy you have got," 
said the collector. " If wc have got a man who can 
write I'll do my duty by him." 

Mr. Trowbridge's house sets well back from the 
street and is half hidden by the trees that surround and 
frame it. It stands on a high hill, and the southern 
window of its owner's study commands a fair view of 
the neighboring town of Belmont, where William Dean 
Howells at one time had a delightful home, and whence 
a morning's drive takes one to and through the Newtons. 
Hawthorne passed the winter of 18o^ in w hat is known 

28;^ 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

as the Horace Mann house in West. Newton and there 
completed "The BUthedale Romance"; Elizabeth 
Stuart Phelps "Ward has lived for a number of years in 
Newton Highlands, and an old-fashioned dwclhng in 
Newton Centre was for half a century the home of 
Samuel Francis Smith, author of "America." 

The hymn with which Dr. Smith's name and fame 
are identified was a chance inspiration of his youth. 
A native of Boston, he was graduated at Harvard, in 
18'29, iu the class with Oliver Wendell Ilolnus, and 
then became a student at Andover Theological Semin- 
ary. He was only twenty-one years old when he entered 
Andover, but had visited Europe, spending most of his 
time in Germany. Though not of German ancestry, 
he was familiar with the German tongue, and to tliis 
circumstance the nation owes its anthem. In the 
winter of 1832 Lowell Mason, then a noted composer 
and music publisher of Boston, paid a visit to young 
Smith, from whom he had previously accepted several 
hymns, and giving him a number of books of German 
hymns and tunes, asked him to select such as seemed 
suited to the needs of American schools and churches. 
The words were to be translated from the German into 
English, "or," said Mason, half in jest, "if you can 

283 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

write some original hymns to fit the tunes so much the 
better." While turning the pages of one of the books 
a few days later, the student ran across a tune that held 
his attention by its simple and natural movement. 
Glancing at the German words at the bottom of the 
page he saw that they were patriotic, — the tune, as he 
was to learn at a later time, was the British " God save 
the King," — and he instantly felt the impulse to write 
a patriotic hymn of his own. Half an hour later he had 
put on paper the words of "America." His work 
seemed good to the author, and when he sent it to 
Mason the latter at once recognized its worth. Sung 
for the first time at a children's celebration in Boston, 
on July 4, 1832, it stamped itself indelibly on the mem- 
ory of those who heard it, and, without other impetus 
than its own strength, was soon carried the length and 
breadth of the land. 

Dr. Smith was graduated at Andover in 1832, and 
then became pastor of a church in Waterville, Maine, 
serving at the same time as professor of modern lan- 
guages in the college of that town, now known as Colby 
University. From 1842 to 1854 he held a pastorate in 
Newton Centre, which was ever after his home, and 
then for fifteeen years was engaged in editorial and mis- 

284 



A WINDING B A Y S T A T E JOUR N E Y 

sionary work. The last days of his long life of eighty- 
seven years were devoted to Uterary pursuits, chiefly 
in the line of hymnology. He edited several collections, 
and was the author of more than two hundred hymns 
and poems, none of them, however, equaling in fame 
and popularity the "America" of his early manhood. 
The writer's way when he left the Newtons led 
through Wayland to Sudbury and the old inn celebrated 
by Longfellow. Wayland, a sleepy village removed 
from the beaten line of travel, was for nearly thirty 
years the home of Lydia Maria Child, whose books 
make sUght appeal to the altered taste of a later time, 
but whose heroic and unselfish labors in behalf of the 
slave give her an honored place among the leaders of 
the greatest of modern crusades. Born in Medford 
in 1802, Mrs. Child passed her girlhood there and in 
the Watertown home of her brother, Convers Francis, 
a Unitarian minister of rare natural gifts and rarer 
attainments, who was the directing influence in her 
mental development. Her first book was " Ilobomok," 
an Indian tale, written when she was nineteen years of 
age, and this was followed in 1822 by "The Rebels," 
which dealt with Boston scenes on the eve of the 
Revolution. Bo'h stories had faults aplenty, but both 

285 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

were written with vigor and they made their author 
the best known woman writer of her time. 

Miss Francis was married in 1828 to David Lee 
Child, a lawyer of Boston, and five years later she pub- 
lished her famous " Appeal for that Class of Americans 
called Africans," the most telling as it was also the 
ablest argument in favor of emancipation ever put forth 
in America in book form. Thereafter for thirty years 
her time and energies were mainly devoted to the ad- 
vancement of that cause. From 1841 to 1849 she 
edited the "Anti-Slavery Standard," a weekly news- 
paper published in New York, while books and pamph- 
lets devoted to the same end poured in a steady stream 
from her pen. She never, however, wholly deserted 
the ranks of literature for those of reform. Her novel of 
" Philothea," the scene of which was laid in ancient 
Greece, appeared in 1836, and in 1855 she published 
in three large volumes her " Progress of Religious Ideas 
through Successive Ages." The latter cost her six 
years of most arduous intellectual labor, and is still 
worth careful reading, if only for the generous and 
liberal spirit that pervades it. 

It was finished at Wayland, where after 185'-2 Mr. and 
Mrs. Child made their home in a modest house be- 

286 



A WINDING HAY STATE JOURNEY 



queathed her by her father. The Child cottage, though 
enlarged and altered by a later owner, retains the 
main outUnes of the original structure. It stands on 
high ground in the outskirts of the village, near the 
Sudbury river, Ayith a broad expanse of meadow lands 
close at hand, and in the west a prospect of distant hills. 
There in the serene old age that is the lot of those who 
have faithfully served their generation, Mrs. Child 
found happiness in the companionship of her books and 
flowers and the friends who sought her out in her se- 
clusion. Her husband died in 1874, and six years 
later she was laid beside him in the village cemetery. 

It is, perhaps, five miles from Wayland to the Red 
Horse Tavern of Sudbury, famous as the scene of Long- 
fellow's '* Tales of a Wayside Inn." The visitor recog- 
nizes the ancient hostelry the instant he catches the first 
ghmpse of it — a roomy two-storied structure, with 
gambrel roof and square massive chimneys, set down 
at the foot of a sheltering hill and shaded on the west 
and south by towering elms. No one knows just how 
old it is, and there are no records preserved from which 
the date can be obtained, but such as there are tell of 
the past for two hundred and twenty years. During 
Lovewell's war in ll^-i- its taproom was the rendezvous 

287 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

of the troops who patrolled the road in the neighbor- 
hood, — buflf-coated riders quick to learn where good 
liquor was to be had, — and during the French and 
Indian wars It was a favorite stopping-place for soldiers 
on the march from Boston to Crown Point. 

Colonel Ezekiel Howe became the owner of the inn 
in 1764 and conducted it until his death in 1796, when 
he was succeeded by his son, x-Vdam Howe, who was its 
landlord for thirty-five years. Adam's successor was 
his son Lyman, the Squire of Longfellow's verse, 

"Grave in his aspect and attire," 

who for thirty years following 1831 smoked his pipe 
and read the Worcester " Spy " under the old elms near 
the doorway. The days of the first and second Howe 
were the days also of the turnpike and the stage-coach, 
and the now deserted highway on which the tavern 
faces was long a busy thoroughfare over which flowed a 
mighty current of travel. All sorts and conditions of 
men on their way to or from Boston delighted to halt at 
the Red Horse for rest and refreshment. The well of 
the old inn was famous for its water, and with coffee 
and home-brewed ale and cider Uie thirsty were well 
suppUcd, while for the hungry man there was always a 

288 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

bountiful store of roast beef and potatoes, brown bread 
and doughnuts, apple sauce and pumpkin pies. But 
those days are past; the locomotive long ago replaced 
the stage-coach; and since 18G0, when dwindling cus- 
tom forbade its further use as a hostelry, it has filled 
the humbler role of farm-house. Thus Longfellow's 
description of it in the prelude to his " Tales of a Way- 
side Inn" seems to the visitor even more appropriate 
now than when it was penned forty years ago : 

"A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, 
Now somewhat fallen to decay. 
With weather stains upon the wall, 
And stairways worn and crazy doors. 
And creaking and uneven floors. 
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall." 

The inn is entered by a great oaken door opening into 
a hall which runs straight through the house. The 
inn parlor is on the left of this hall, and on the right is 
the old bar-room, while above stairs are a dozen sleep- 
ing-rooms and a spacious dance-hall, with a broad fire- 
place at each end and well polished floor whereon the 
belles and beaux of an earlier time often tripped a 
measure to the umsic of some country fiddler. But 
the most interesting apartments in the inn are the low- 
ceilinged bar-room, which was long the center of its life 

289 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

and activity, and the parlor where Longfellow's sup- 
posed company met and told their tales around a blaz- 
ing wood fire. It is an interesting group that the poet 
brings to the tavern. All of the story-tellers were real 
characters. The poet was Thomas William Parsons, 
and the young Sicilian was Parsons' brother-in-law, 
Luigi Monti, long United States consul at Palermo, and 
now a resident of Rome. Ole Bull was the musician: 

"Fair haired, blue eyed, his aspect blithe, 
His figure tall 'Und straight and lithe. 
And every feature of his face 
Revealing his Norwegian race." 

The Spanish Jew was Israel Edrehi, the theologian 
Daniel Treadwell, an eminent physicist who was for 
many years a professor at Harvard, and the student 
Henry Ware Wales, a scholar and bookman whose early 
death cut short a career of rare promise. Several of 
the group were familiar figures at the actual inn, habitu- 
ally spending their summers there. Longfellow, on 
the other hand, visited it only twice, but that his visits 
made a lasting impression is evident from his poem. 
The writer would have delighted lo follow along its 
westward course the old post road which once gave 
prosperity to the Wayside Inn, but the days of a brief 

290 



A \N I N D I N G B A Y STATE JOUR N E Y 

summer vacation were more than half spent, and so, 
much against his will, he was compelled to journey by 
rail tlii-ough Worcester to Springfield. George Ban- 
croft was born in a house now gone from Salisbury 
Street, Worcester, and in that city's Rural Cemetery 
his body rests. After the failure of the Round Hill 
School at Northampton and before he was appointed 
collector of the port of Boston, Bancroft had his home 
in a house yet standing at 49 Chestnut Street, Spring- 
field, and there worked for several years on the history 
which was to occupy him until his death. Springfield 
people, with natural pride in their places of note, also 
tell the visitor that the house numbered 182 Central 
Street and now occupied by a private school for girls 
was the last home of Samuel Bowles, and that, in a pic- 
turesque dwelling set on a hill in the suburban section 
known as Brightwood, Josiah Gilbert Holland spent 
the latter years of his residence in the town. 

Samuel Bowles was not a man of letters in the limited 
sense of the term, but he was one of the few really great 
editors of his time. His father established the Spring- 
field " Republican" as a weekly paper in 18'-24, two 
years before the birth of the son. The younger Bowles 
attended school until he was sixteen years of age. Then 

•201 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

he entered his father's office, and two years later per- 
suaded him to make the " Republican " a daily paper. 
Thereafter the son carried the chief burden of it, mak- 
ing it, despite the limitations of a country town, a jour- 
nal of national reputation and influence. The news 
printed in the " Republican " was the news which most 
interested its readers, for, knowing that what country 
people like best in their paper is what they know al- 
ready, the events they talk about when they meet on the 
street, its editor took pains not only to collect the news 
of every town in the circle of his operations, but to make 
it attractive by careful writing and an orderly and 
legible arrangement. And while thus making himself 
the gossip of all western Massachusetts, he edited the 
general news so well that his readers did not feel the 
need of going elsewhere for more serious intelligence. 

It was, however, through his expressions of editorial 
opinion that Bowles came to exercise an influence felt 
far beyond the borders of his own town and State. 
Here again he showed a keen and sure understanding 
of his public, a public in which still lingered a good deal 
of the Puritan spirit. It was his firm belief that a news- 
paper should safeguard social and political morality by 
giving unsparing publicity to the misdeeds of those 

2\h2 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

who had reputations to suffer, aiul though in his stal- 
wart adherence to this belief he often confounded the 
functions of the "Republican" with those of the Re- 
cording Angel, his influence in the long run always 
made for the public good. He had, moreover, a genius 
for friendship, and knew how to win and hold the re- 
gard of men and women whom it was his wont to freely 
criticise in his journal. 

One of these was Henry L. Dawes, long Congress- 
man and Senator, who has put on record an illuminat- 
ing and delightful anecdote of his relations with Bowles. 
" One morning," he writes, " the ' Republican ' came to 
me at my house in Pittsfield containing a bitter attack 
on me, saying in substance that I Avas a rogue. By 
the same mail came an invitation from Sam to a dinner 
at his house that evening. By way of answer I wrote 
as ugly a telegram as I knew how — and my wife tore it 
up. Then I wrote a letter, and she tore that up. Then 
I took the train for Springfield, telegraphing him to 
meet me at the depot. He was there, and I said to 
him: 'You have done two things that no decent man 
would do in the same day — you have called me a thief 
in the morning and asked me to dinner in the evening.' 
'There is no such thing in the paper.' 'There is: read 

293 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

it!' 'I didn't know it was there — and you must re- 
member that the Springfield " RepubUcan " is one thing, 
and Sam Bowles is another.' 'You are the only man 
who says that or thinks it. Tomorrow, if I accept your 
invitation, every one who has read that article will read 
my name among the diners at your house, and will say, 
"What a spoon Dawes is!" Now I w'on't go to your 
house till that thing is settled.' We talked for fifteen 
minutes — blazed away at each other, and made up. 
The next my family heard of me was a telegram asking 
that my dress coat be sent down! Our friendship," 
adds Dawes, " was a succession of confidences and in- 
dignations, of complaints and reconciliations — and 
through it all I was more attached to him than to any 
one outside of my family." 

But lovable as he was in his home and among: his 
friends, Bowles was another man in the office of his 
newspaper. There, to quote one of his associates, " he 
w'as like a captain on his quarter deck. As soon as he 
entered his office, his whole frame seemed to grow 
tense; his orders were directly and briefly spoken; his 
mere presence kept the whole staff up to concert pitch. 
His genial ease of mannner was laid aside as a man 
throws off his dressing-gown to take hold of work. lie 

^94 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

did not indulge in scolding — a word was enough. 
The men who worked under him felt admiration, loyalty 
and a touch of fear. While work was going on they 
were to him like parts of the great engine he was driv- 
ing, and he urged them as remorselessly as he did him- 
self." And so remorselessly did he drive himself that 
he was worn out before middle age, and died at fiftv- 
two after a long struggle with pain and weariness. 
But he had succeeded in his task of making the best 
provincial newspaper ever published in America. 

An important event in the early history of the " Re- 
publican " was the accession of Josiah Gilbert Holland 
to its stafiF. Dr. Holland was born in Belchertown in 
1819, the son of worthy parents whose lot it was to be 
always poor, and, after a struggling youth passed mainly 
in Northampton, was graduated in 1844 at the Berk- 
shire ^ledical College. He practiced for a time in 
Springfield; but literature was the calling to which his 
taste and his powers attracted him, and in 1849 he 
abandoned medicine for the assistant editorship of the 
" Republican," becoming at the end of two years a part 
owner of the paper. He had found his true vocation, 
and in the editorial columns of the " Republican " soon 
proved himself a most effective preacher of social and 

295 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

domestic moralities. His articles more often than not 
were short and pithy lay sermons, dealing in a practical 
way with questions of conduct and character, and they 
found instant favor with readers who took life as a ser- 
ious and earnest affair. 

In 1858 some of the best of them were published in 
book form under the title of " Timothy Titcomb's Let- 
ters," and this was the first of a series of books, includ- 
ing a number of tales in prose and verse, which reached 
a total sale of more than half a million copies, and made 
Dr. Holland one of the most successful, as he was one 
of the most popular, of American authors. He re- 
mained in the oflSce of the "Republican" until 1857, 
and was for seven years more a constant contributor to 
its columns, but a little later he sold his interest in the 
establishment, and in 1868 he went to Europe. There 
he remained two years, and there with his friend Ros- 
well Smith, a man who combined rare business ability 
with a love of letters, he planned the founding of the 
periodical known first as "Scribner's Monthly" and 
then as the " Century Magazine." He edited the " Cen- 
tury " until his death in 1881 and it now stands a monu- 
ment to his memory. Dr. Holland's fame as an author 
may not and probably will not be a permanent one. 

290 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

He was first and always a preacher, and the preacher's 
sermon rarely outlives the occasion that calls it forth, 
but he never failed to say the right thing in the right 
way for his purpose, and the day is still distant when 
the shrewd sense and racy gravity of his books will cease 
to cheer the plain people for whom they were written. 
Bowles and Dr. Holland when editing the " Repub- 
lican " gave incessant care to the training of their asso- 
ciates, and its office was a nursery of editors. Charles 
Ransom Miller, long editor of the New York " Times," 
was once a writer for the "Republican," and so was 
Talcott Williams of the Philadelphia " Press." Edward 
Bellamy, the author of " Looking Backward," also 
passed his formative years as a working newspaper 
man in Springfield. Bellamy was born and reared in 
the neighboring village of Chicopee Falls. He was 
educated at Union College and in Germany, and after- 
ward studied law and was admtted to the bar. His 
bent, however, was toward a career in letters, and in 
1871, the year he came of age, he joined the staff of the 
"Evening Post" in New York. The following year 
he became an editorial writer on the Springfield 
" Union " and remained with it until 1876, when he re- 
signed to devote himself wholly to literature. 

297 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

One of Bellamy's early romances, "Doctor Heiden- 
hoff's Process," showed rare imaginative powers, and, 
with the short stories which he contributed to the maga- 
zines, made him a favorite with many readers, but he 
did not become widely known until, in 1888, he pub- 
lished "Looking Backward," a novel which presents a 
striking picture of what its author imagined would be 
the state of society if placed on a cooperative basis, and 
of which more than a million copies were sold during 
his lifetime. The writing of this book, begun as a liter- 
ary fantasy to become in the end a great economic 
treatise in a framework of fiction, changed Bellamy 
from a novelist of promise into an impassioned reformer. 
A little later, convinced that it was his duty to educate 
the people toward reform in government, he founded 
"The New Nation," which quickly became a widely 
quoted political and evolutionary journal, and in 1897 
he published "Equality," an elaborate treatise upon 
the subject that gave it its name. Bellamy, however, 
was denied length of years in which to labor for the 
golden age that has been ever the dream of generous 
spirits. His vital energies failed him while he was 
writing "Equality"; no benefit attended upon a health- 
seeking sojourn in Colorado, and in the spring of 1898 

298 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

he was brought back to che in the elm-shaded house, on 
one of the hills overlooking the Chicopee River, where 
he was born and where he had lived nearly all his days. 
AMien Edward Bellamy was a boy in Chicopee Falls 
Eugene Field was growing toward manhood in the 
near by town of Amherst. Though of New England 
descent. Field was born in St. Louis, where his father 
was a distinguished lawyer. His mother died in 1857 
when he was seven years old, and he and his younger 
brother were placed under the care of a maiden cousin, 
Maria Field French of Amherst, with whom he lived 
until he was eighteen. After that he studied in turn at 
AYilliams College, Knox College at Galesburg and the 
State University of Missouri. When he attained his 
majority he came into $C0,000, which he had inherited 
from his father, who died while he was at \Villiams. 
He took one of his intimate friends, the brother of the 
w^oman he afterwards married, and went to Europe. 
"I had a lovely time," he once said in relating his ex- 
perience. "I just swatted the money around. I saw 
more things and did more things than are dreamed of 
in your philosophy, Horatio. I had money. I paid 
it out for experience — it was plenty. Experience was 

lying round loose." 

299 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Young Field came home at the end of six months, 
rich in memory but with only the remnant of his bank 
account, and secured a place on the stafiF of the St. 
Louis "Journal," of which he soon became city editor. 
He later worked on the St. Joseph " Gazette," but in 
1877 was called back to St. Louis to become an editorial 
writer on the "Times- Journal." In 1880 he was man- 
aging editor of the " Times " in Kansas City, and after 
that held a similar post on the Denver "Tribune." 
During these years he put forth a great deal of quaint 
and droll humor, but he did not come fully into his own 
until in 1883 he joined the staff of the Chicago " News," 
now the "Record." He went to the "News" under 
contract to write what he pleased, but he was to furnish 
a column a day of it. This column, which he called 
"Sharps and Flats," consisted at first of short para- 
graphs of the humorous, satirical type, but was gradu- 
ally devoted to the songs of childhood and the poems 
and prose tales that now help to fill the twelve goodly 
volumes of his collected works. 

It was recognized from the first that the man and the 
matter were unusual, and long before death stayed his 
pen at the early age of forty-five Field had come to be 
known as one of the most individual and dehghtful 

300 



A ^YINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

writers of his time. Though he may not have had 
genius, he was gifted, as his prose writings prove, with 
dehcate sentiment and ihe rare humor which often Ues 
close to tears, while few writers have woven so many 
beautiful child fancies into verse. It was, indeed, by 
his poems reminiscent of boy-life, and his songs of 
childhood, that Field preferred to be judged, and had 
he never written anything else these suffice to assure 
him fame. Yet those who knew him instinctively 
speak of the man before his work, and are quick to de- 
clare that tender and true as are his poems and tales 
he himself was far more lovable than them all. This 
is, perhaps, the finest tribute that can be paid to a 
writer, and the final estimate of Eugene Field is sure 
to recall as the fairest of his virtues the sunshine which 
was part of his work because it was part of his nature. 
The house in which he passed what he delighted to 
recall as "the finest and sweetest days of his life," yet 
stands at 38 Amity Street, Amherst, and at 83 South 
Pleasant Street, in the same town, one finds the birth- 
place and early home of Helen Jackson. The daughter 
of an Amherst professor and born in 1831, this gifted 
and most interesting woman was married at the age of 
twenty-one to Edward B. Hunt, a captain of engineers 

301 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

in the regular army. Their first child, a beautiful boy, 
died in 1854; the husband met his death by accident in 
1863, and the death of a second son, a little less than 
two years later, left the wife and mother wholly alone 
in the world. Perhaps no woman ever lived through 
greater sorrows, and Mrs. Hunt, who up to that time 
had shown no special aptitude for a literary vocation, 
now turned to writing as a welcome relief from the 
heavy burden that had been laid upon her. It was a 
short and easy step from writing to publishing, and 
soon her poems and prose sketches began to appear in 
the periodicals of that time. Her first volume of 
"Verses" was published in 1870, and in 1873 her first 
prose volume, " Bits of Travel," came from the press. 
After that a steady stream of magazine articles flowed 
from her pen, to be duly gathered into modest volumes, 
and finally, when her success as a writer was no longer 
a matter of doubt, she entered the field of fiction. Two 
of the " No Name " series of novels, " Mercy Philbrick's 
Choice" and "Hetty's Strange History," were hers; 
and the powerful series of stories published in the 
" Century Magazine " over the pen name of Sax Holm 
were also attributed to her. 

"Mercy Philbrick's Choice" was published in 1876, 
30!2 



A \V I N D I N G BAY S T A T E J O I R N E Y 

and the same year Mrs. Hunt married William S. Jack- 
son, a banker of Colorado, and took ii[) her residence 
in the West. The adoption of a new abode brought 
her face to face with the Indian question, and gave a 
new trend to her literary career. "I have become," 
she wrote to a friend, ''what I have said a thousand 
times was the most odious thing in life, — a woman 
with a hobby." The hobl)y in her case was a gener- 
ous and disinterested one, and bore fruit, after long 
and careful study of the subject, in " Ramona," a com- 
pelling story of Indian life in southern California, and 
of the national government's treatment, shameful, in 
many ways, of its aboriginal wards. Not content to 
work only in fiction, she also wrote " A Century of Dis- 
honor," giving for the first time in systematic form an 
account of breaches of faith with the Indians from the 
beginning to the end of the first century of the republic. 
Thenceforth the task she had taken unto herself re- 
mained her absorbing purpose, and had not a wasting 
illness which seized her in 1884 ended a year later in 
her death, her greatest work might have been a novel 
that would have accomplished for the red man what 
" Uncle Tom's Cabin " did for the black. 

But she did not live to write it, and it is for the verse 
303 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

belonging mainly to her early and middle years that 
Mrs. Jackson will be held longest in memory. The 
product of one whose fervid enthusiasm threw a glow 
and power into her every thought and word, her poetry 
reaches a level attained by no other woman of her time 
and country. Her first verse, written when she was a 
bereaved wife and mother, was of the elegiac kind, but 
her lyre soon compassed a wide variety of notes, and 
her collected works include, besides the simple poetry 
of domestic life, love poems remarkable for depth of 
passion and imaginative sweep; sonnets exquisite in 
form and substance, like her "Thought" and " Gon- 
dolieds," which Emerson carried in his pocket and 
pulled out to read to his friends; songs of wood and 
field that would have won praise from Thoreau, and a 
number of poems in the nature of odes, such as her 
"Spinning" and "A Funeral March," whose high 
thought and noble harmony haunt one like the strains 
of a cathedral organ. 

Emily Dickinson, another singer of exceptional gifts, 
was also a native of Amherst, and likewise the heroine 
of a career which if widely different was no less re- 
markable than that of her old schoolmate, Mrs. Jack- 
son. Born in 1830, the daughter of a lawyer of repute 

30^ 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

and comfortable fortune, Emily Dickinson passed all 
of her six and fifty years of life in a fine old house 
which stands embowered by trees, at 50 Main Street, 
Amherst. Her early years were those of a healthy, 
active-minded and joy-loving New England girl; but 
she never married, and as the years passed withdrew 
completely from society and the world, holding to few 
friends outside of her own family circle and known to 
that few chiefly through her letters. These, brought 
together and published after her death, prove her a 
writer of unique charm and quality, with an individual 
and unusual view f human life and destiny. But 
even more remarkable are the three thin volumes of 
her verse, also given to the world after her death, which 
reveal a passionate love and intimate knowledge of 
Nature in all her varying moods, voiced with slight 
regard for form, but with a grasp of feeling and a 
strength of thought and phrase unlike anything else in 
our literature. WTiile there survives a single lover of 
true poetry the message of the shy recluse of Amherst 
will not be unheeded or forgotten. 

The journey begun in Boston ended in Northampton 
on the Connecticut, where George Bancroft dwelt for 
a dozen years as master of the Round Hill School, and 

305 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

where George W. Cable now has his home. The old 
town, shaded by noble elms and brooded over by the 
twin summits of Holyoke and Tom, was also the birth- 
place of Sylvester Judd, the author of "Margaret," 
the scene of which was laid in and about Northampton. 
Judd was born in 1813 and graduated at Yale at the 
age of twenty-three. After that he passed through the 
Harvard Divinity School, and during the remainder of 
his life, cut short in 1853, when his work was only half 
done, he served as pastor of a Unitarian church in 
Augusta, Maine. " Margaret," the book by which he 
is best known, was published in 1845, and, if it does 
not, should still find readers, for, despite many faults 
of construction, it shows loving knowledge of life and 
nature, and the sunshine of a delicate and gracious 
spirit warms and illumines its every page. 

Northampton's chief glory, however, lies in its asso- 
ciation with Jonathan Edwards, in intellectual power 
and acumen the greatest American of his century. The 
father of Edwards was more than sixty years minister 
of the east parish of Windsor, Connecticut, and there 
in 1703 the son was born, the fifth child and the only 
son in a family of eleven children. A child of rare 
precocity he entered Yale at thirteen, and before he 

30G 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

was sixteen niade his "Notes on the Mind" which, to 
quote one of his biographers, "present him as an in- 
tellectual prodigy which has no parallel." He was 
graduated at Yale in 1719, and for a time preached to a 
small Presbyterian congregation in New Y'ork City, 
but in 1726 was called to Northampton as the colleague 
of his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. He accepted 
the call, and in 1729, at the death of his venerable 
kinsman, took charge of the church. 

A yet more important event in the early life of 
Edwards was his courtship of Sarah Pierpont, a woman 
of rare physical beauty and of rarer gifts of mind and 
heart. They were married in 1727 and the wife proved 
an ideal helpmeet for the young minister, becoming the 
administrator of their household affairs, and making 
their home a center of genial and attractive hospitality. 
The famous Whitefield, who was once their guest, 
makes characteristic reference in his diary to their 
happy home life. " On the Sabbath," he writes, " felt 
wonderful satisfaction in being at the house of Mr. 
Edwards. He is a son himself and hath also a daughter 
of Abraham for his wife. A sweeter couple I have not 
seen. Their children were dressed, not in silks and 
satins, but plain, as becomes tlie children of those who 

307 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

in all things ought to be examples of Christian sim- 
plicity. She is a woman adorned with a meek and 
quiet spirit, and talked so feelingly and so solidly of the 
things of God, and seemed to be such a helpmeet to her 
husband, that she caused me to renew those prayers 
which for some months I have put up to God, that he 
would send me a daughter of Abraham to be my wife." 
Twenty-four years Edwards preached to the people 
of Northampton, years which carried his fame and in- 
fluence as a spiritual teacher and guide through the 
colonies and across seas. Though his sermons were 
based on the hard and gloomy theology of Calvin, they 
were tempered with the emotional Christianity of the 
preacher's own epoch, and he charged the least of them 
with the deep spiritual insight, the burning devotion, 
the vivid imagination and the masterful logic which 
were part and parcel of his being. His famous sermon, 
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," gives the 
measure of his powers when in minatory mood; we are 
told that despite the length of his sermons the members 
of his congregation were often " disappointed that they 
were not longer"; and one man has recorded that, as 
he listened to him when discoursing of the day of judg- 
ment, he fully anticipated that the dreadful day would 

308 



A WINDING BAY STATE JOURNEY 

begin when the sermon should come to an end! He 
was, indeed, the greatest preacher of his age. His ser- 
mons were read not only in America but in England 
and Scotland, and of his labors in Northampton was 
born the great religious awakening which for years 
profoundly moved the colonies and the mother country. 

But evil days were in store for this gentle preacher of 
a strenuous creed, and in 1750 there came an unhappy 
break with the church over which he had been settled 
in his youth, and with which, as was then generally the 
case with New England ministers, he had expected to 
end his days. There is no need to tell again the familiar 
story of the dispute between Edwards and his people 
over matters of church discipline, but it ended in his 
harsh dismissal at the age of forty-seven, with a large 
family of children and no means of support. North- 
ampton's loss, however, was the world's gain, for a few 
months later Edwards, thanks to foreign influence, was 
given charge of a mission church in the then outpost 
village of Stockbridge, and there found leisure to write 
his " Freedom of the Will " and " A Treatise on Original 
Sin," two of the few great books in English theology. 

Seven years he spent in scholarly seclusion, and then 
a message came to Stockbridge asking him to accept 

309 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

the presidency of Princeton College, made vacant by 
the death of his son-in-law, the elder Aaron Burr. He 
accepted the call, after a period of modest doubt as to 
his fitness, but had barely been installed in the post 
where his energies might have counted best when, for 
the sake of precaution, he was inoculated for the small- 
pox and succumbed to the superinduced disease. His 
last thoughts were of the absent wife in their distant 
Stockbridge home. "Tell her," he said, "that the 
uncommon union that has so long subsisted between 
us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual, and 
therefore will continue forever." Before the year's 
end Mrs. Edwards followed her husband out of the 
world, and they who were " lovely and pleasant in their 
lives " rest together iij the graveyard at Princeton. 

Northampton has made ample if tardy atonement 
for its ill-treatment of one who as man and thinker 
ranks among the giants, and whose fame will survive 
as long as New England blood and pride survive. 
After his death the people who had thrust him out 
reared in their cemetery a slab to his memory, and 
when, in 1833, a second Trinitarian church was estab- 
lishetl in the town it took the name of the Edwards 
Church, while in these latter times each recurring 

310 



A WINDING B A Y S T A T E J O i: R N E Y 

summer brings a throng of reverent pilgrims to the 
tall elm wliich he planted and which guards the site of 
his vanished home in what is now King Street. " Take 
your hats from off your heads," said a Scotch mother 
to her two boys as in plaid and kilt they halted before 
this tree, " for you stand on holy ground." The words 
of this visitor from over sea fitly voice posterity's ver- 
dict on the life and work of Jonathan Edwards. 



811 



Chapter XI 
The Berkshires and Beyond 

The name of William CuUen Bryant is written broad 
across the corner of New England that gave him birth, 
and never had poet nobler nesting place than that 
region of primeval, forest-clad hills, less rugged now 
but not less beautiful than it was in his boyhood. From 
the porch of the house which knew him in youth and 
in old age, one looks over a landscape impressive in 
the highest degree. A narrow valley, cut by a branch 
of the Westfield river, hollows the center of the view, 
and on the farther rim are the slopes of Plainfield, 
where Bryant passed a portion of his school days. 
Winter lingers late on these high grounds, but in 
summer the landscape is glorious with verdure, and 
autumn here puts on imperial splendors. 

From Northampton it is a twelve-mile ride, and even 
more, to Cummington and its single street shaded by 
elms whose curving branches make a temple arch more 
inspiring than any ever raised by man. The site of the 
house in which the poet was born in 1794 is not in 

312 



THE BERKS HI RES AND BEYOND 

Cummington, but about a mile away at the junction 
of two roads. The house itself long since disappeared, 
and a shaft of granite, erected by Bryant's daughters, 
now marks the spot. Not far from this is the home- 
stead in which Bryant spent his boyhood, and which, 
after it had been long in the hands of strangers, the 
poet bought back in his old age — a comfortable farm- 
house now the property of his daughter. Here each 
year from 1864 until liis death in 1878 he spent the 
months of August and September. The writing-room 
in which he composed some of his best verse and trans- 
lated much of Homer's epics remains as it was in his 
last days of life. His bed-chamber is also unchanged 
and is never occupied. The furnishing of the latter 
apartment is of the plainest and simplest sort — a pine 
chamber set, a rug and a few engravings. 

All about the Bryant homestead are objects which 
lent their influence to the poet's songs. Beyond a 
meadow to the south is the grove of maples nobly pic- 
tured in an "Inscription for an Entrance to a Wood," 
and underneath their shade blossoms in season the 
" Yellow Violet " which he enshrined in verse of classic 
simplicity. Further down the hillside flourishes in early 
summer the " Fringed Gentian," held in loving memory 

313 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

by every student of Bryant, and a few rods in the rear 
of the homestead still murmurs " The Rivulet," which 
was the source of his childish delight and his boyish 
dreams. Again, a short stroll along the northward 
road carries one to a grateful solitude of forest and rock 
and swift-flowing stream, where " Thanatopsis " might 
have had its birth, and where again and again has 
sparkled the royal jewels portrayed in "A Winter 
Piece." Returning to the house and faring southward 
past the school building erected by the poet for the 
children of the neighborhood, and the grass-grown 
God's Acre in which his parents take their rest, one 
comes to a path leading down into the valley of East 
Cummington where, in a nook made by the winding 
Agawam, stands Bryant's best memorial — a stone 
library structure given to the town by him. 

Br}^ant's early schooling was directed by his father, 
a physician and writer of no mean quality. WTien he 
was fourteen years of age he was sent to Brookfield, 
where he began the study of Latin with the Reverend 
Thomas Snell. The following year he took up Greek 
and mathematics under the direction of the Reverend 
Moses Hallock, of whose Plainficld school more will 
be said in another place, and at sixteen he entered 

314 



THE BERKSHIRES AND BEYOND 

Williams College as a sophomore, but remained only 
seven months. He left at the close of liis second term, 
intending soon to enter Yale, and to finish his course 
at that institution, but the narrowness of his father's 
means prevented him from carrying out his purpose. 
He had already produced much excellent verse, and to 
the period following his return from Williams belong 
his " Thanatopsis " and the " Lines to a Waterfowl." 

The former was composed in the woods at Cummington 
in Bryant's seventeenth year and a little later he began 
the study of law. He was admitted to the bar in 18 lo, 
and on a December day journeyed on foot from Cum- 
mington to Plainfield to find what inducements the latter 
place held out for commencing there the practice of his 
profession. The world seemed to grow darker as he 
climbed the hills, and his future more uncertain and 
desperate. Halting to watch the sun as it sank to rest, 
he saw a wild duck flying across a sky of wondrous 
beauty, headed for the goal of which Nature had made 
it sure; and there was revealed to him a picture of the 
divine providence which gave him strength and cour- 
age. When he reached the house where he was to 
lodge he wrote the " Lines to a Waterfowl," noble alike 
in utterance and substance. Southey's ''Ebb-tide" 

.'HS 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

suggested the form of the stanza, and the concluding 
verse shows how the bird had impressed upon him the 
lesson of trust in the divine goodness: 

"He who from zone to zone guides through the sky 

thy boundless flight. 
In the long way that I must tread alone will lead my 

steps aright." 

Bryant resided at Plainfield only eight months, re- 
moving at the end of that time to Great Barrington, 
where he remained nine years. Great Barrington is 
one of the loveliest nooks in the Berkshires, a region 
famous for the picturesque beauty of its scenery. 
Through the fair meadows of a wide valley flows the 
curving Housatonic, bordered by densely wooded 
ridges and fertile farms. Monument Mountain and 
Green River, both celebrated by Bryant, are close at 
hand, and to the southwest are the noble heights of the 
Taghconic range, among whose glens are the Bash- 
bish falls, while a short drive takes one to the lakes of 
Salisbury, Connecticut. All around Great Barrington 
are charming bits of grove and glen and stream, and 
Bryant's verse clearly reflects the spell wliich from the 
first the beauty of his new home cast upon him. Dur- 
ing the quiet yet not uneventful period which he passed 

310 



THE BERKSHIRES AND BEYOND 

there he toiled diligently at his professsion. His heart, 
however, was not in it, and the years, as they passed, 
brought with them a growing distaste for the law, and 
steadily increasing absorption in literary pursuits. 
Many of the poeris which he wrote at this period were 
published in the "United States Gazette" of Boston, 
and he also contributed "Green River," "A Walk at 
Sunset" and "To the West Wind" to Dana's "Idle 
Man." In Great Barrington, too, he composed his 
stately poem "The Ages," which, in 1821, he was in- 
vited to read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of 
Harvard. The same year he issued his first volume of 
verse, in bulk little more tlian a pamphlet but mem- 
orable as containing some of the best work that ever 
came from his pen. 

The tradition of Bryant that yet abides in Berkshire 
paints a man who shunned society, had few intimates, 
loved out-of-door life, and lived much by himself and 
among his books. His recluse habits, however, did 
not prevent him from winning the heart of a gifted and 
gracious woman, and in June, 1821, he was married to 
Frances Fairchild of Great Barrington. Xo union 
could have been more nearly an ideal one than that of 
the lawyer poet and his bride. How close were the tied 

317 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

that bound him to her who was in after years the in- 
spiration of such exquisite hnes as " The Future I^ife " 
and "The Life that Is," George WiUiam Curtis has 
told us in saying that "his wife w^as his only intimate 
friend, and when she died he had no other." The 
house in which they were married, a tree-girt structure 
dating back to colony times, still stands in the outskirts 
of Great Barrington, and time has also spared the 
ancient homestead in which the young couple began 
their married life. 

Instead of taking the entire house, they hired two 
rooms, a chamber and a parlor, and shared the kitchen 
with the other occupants. The memory of those 
modest days never grew dim. Bryant's biographer 
writes that fifty-five years after his marriage, and a de- 
cade after his wife's death, the poet revisited the house 
where the marriage had taken place. He walked about 
for some time in silence; but as he turned to depart 
exclaimed, " There is not a spire of grass her feet have 
not touched," and his eyes filled with tears. Four 
years after his marriage Bryant finally gave up the law 
for letters, and, removing to New York, undertook the 
management of a monthly journal, the New York 
"Review." When at the end of a year the "Review" 

318 



THE BERK SHIRES AND BEYOND 

went the way of similar ventures, he transferred his 
services to the "Evening Post," of which, in 1829, he 
became chief editor, holding that position until his 
death. Thenceforth his early haunts knew him oidy 
as an occasional pilgrim and summer sojourner. 

The visitor to Bryant's country does well to shape 
his course through Plainfield and Lanesboro when 
journeying from Cummington to Pittsfield, and so into 
the heart of the Berkshircs. It is the boast of the good 
people ( f Plainfield that their out-of-the-way hamlet, 
perched on a group of hills, alongside of the eastern 
boundary of the Berkshires, has sent forth more minis- 
ters, authors and editors than any other town of its size 
in the western world. William Richards, the devoted 
missionary, who began the work which made the 
Hawaiian Islands a part of the United States, was a 
native of Plainfield, and so was Charles Dudley Warner, 
while less than eight miles away Mary Lyon, founder 
of Mount Holyoke College, was born and grew into 
womanhood — " all intellect," they said of her. Sanmcl 
Shaw, for more than forty years the Plainfield physician, 
studied medicine with the father of William Cullen 
Bryant and married the poet's sister, a beautiful girl 
whose early death inspired one of her brother's sweet- 
est poems, "The Death of the Flowers." 

319 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Plainfield's most cherished memories, however, have 
to do with the Reverend Moses Hallock, the first minis- 
ter of the town, in whose classical school, conducted 
for thirty years in his own house, scores of young men 
were prepared for college and the higher walks of life. 
Bryant has been mentioned as one of Hallock's pupils, 
and among others who went forth from his roof to play 
an important and some a mighty part in the world's 
work were John Brown of Harper's Ferry fame, who 
ended his fight for the slave on the scaffold; Marcus 
Whitman, who took the first wagon train over the 
Rocky Mountains to Oregon; Pliny Fisk and Levi 
Parsons, early missionaries to Palestine, who brought 
that country nearer than ever before to Bible readers; 
and Gerard Hallock, the pastor's son, who in 1828 
helped to found the New York " Journal of Commerce " 
and then conducted it with signal ability until his death. 
The elder Hallock takes his rest hard by the church 
where for forty-five years he preached to his people. 
His long time home yet stands in the main street of the 
village, surrounded by orchards and shade trees, but 
shorn of the roses which the parson loved to tend. 

Lanesboro was the birthplace and now guards the 
dust of Henry Wheeler Shaw, the shrewd and kindly 

320 



THE BERKSHIRES AND BEYOND 

humorist known to the world as Josh BilHngs. Shaw, 
who was born in 1818, came of a distinguished family, 
both his grandfather and father having been members 
of Congress. He was intended by his parents for the 
law, but ran away from home when a lad in hivS teens, 
long led a roving and checkered life in the West, and 
finally at the age of forty, poor in pocket but rich in 
experience, settled at Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson, 
in the business of auctioneer. There his ready wit 
and gift for saying wise things in a quaint way soon 
attracted the attention of the editor of the Poughkeepsie 
"Press," who asked him to become a contributor to 
its columns. He did so to the extent of about forty 
short essays, and so, without his seeking, found a liter- 
ary career opening before him. 

Shaw thought that his papers in the "Press" con- 
tained both humor and wisdom, but nobody noticed 
them outside of Poughkeepsie. One day he read a 
squib by Arteraus Ward, then in the flush of his popu- 
larity, on a subject that he had treated in one of his own 
essays, and as he read he pondered the question why 
Ward's writings should be widely quoted and his own 
fall still-born from the press. " It is the bad spelling," 
he finally said to himself. Acting upon this conviction, 

321 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

he took one of his essays, clothed it in cacographic 
dress, and, signing it Josh Bilhngs, sent it to a New 
York weekly paper. The misspelled "Essa on the 
Muel," when republished, instantly caught the popular 
fancy, and ere long became a favorite with President 
Lincoln, who often read parts of it to his Cabinet, 
much to the disgust of the irascible Stanton. Thus 
encouraged, its author translated other of his essays 
into his peculiar phonetic system, and with their re- 
printing in another garb the fame of Josh Billings went 
out of our country around the world. 

Shaw's writings were now eagerly sought by editors, 
and when, a little later, he went on the lecture platform 
he commanded large audiences. In 1871 he began 
publishing his immensely successful "Farmer's All- 
minax," and in his last years as "Uncle Esek" con- 
tributed pithy sayings to the " Century Magazine." 
He came to believe as time went on that it was his mis- 
sion to put the common sense of all time in proverbs, 
and thus his essays, lectures and almanacs were mainly 
made up of epigrams and observations strung together 
with little regard to sequence. But how picturesque 
and full of homely wisdom some of his sayings are, as 
for instance, " One hornet, when he feels in good con- 

322 



THE BERKSIIIRES AND BEYOND 

dition, can break up a whole camp meeting"; "Some 
people brag of their great descent, when their great 
descent is just what ails them," and " I like to find a 
man just as honest when he is measuring a peck of 
onions as when he is shouting glory hallelujah." As 
a moralist, whose philosophy combined wit with 
wisdom, Shaw had no equal in his day, and he and his 
work are not likely to be soon forgotten. He died in 
California in 1885, but his remains, in fulfilment of his 
last request, were brought back and laid beside those 
of his parents within the shadow of his native hills. 

Some one has said that thought thrives best amid 
the beautiful, and true it is that the Berkshire country, 
a region abounding in lakes and mountain torrents, 
green meadows and shaded glens, is rich in association 
with some of the most cherished memories in our lit- 
erary annals. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and 
Frances Appleton passed the first summers of their 
married life in a square, old-fashioned dwelling that 
yet holds its accustomed place in one of the elm-shaded 
streets of Pittsfield. South of that town on the way 
to Lenox stands the house, greatly altered by a later 
owner, which was for several years the vacation-time 
home of Oliver Wendell Holmes, who here found more 

3^3 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

than one character and bit of scenery described by him 
in " Elsie Venner." Rose Terry Cooke, a verse-maker 
and story-teller of more than ordinary gifts, passed the 
closing years of her life in PittsJBeld, and there, too, in 
an earlier time, Herman Melville had his home in a 
house facing Greylock and the nearer hills. 

Melville is now half-forgotten, but fifty years ago 
the publication of a book by him was regarded both 
here and in England as an event of the first importance. 
The reasons for his early popularity and present neglect 
are bound up in the story of his life. The son of a New 
York merchant and born in that city in 1819, the death 
of his father compelled him while still a growing lad to 
make his own way in the world. For a time he taught 
a district school, but then shipped before the mast on 
the Pacific whaler "Acushnet," and at the opening of 
1841 sailed from New Bedford on the voyage which 
was to give him material for his chief romances. " If I 
shall ever deserve," he afterward wrote, "any real re- 
pute in that small but high hushed world which I might 
not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter 1 shall 
do anything that, on the whole, a man might rather 
have done than to have left undone, then I prospec- 
tively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling; 
for a whale-ship was my Yale and my Harvard." 

3^2 -t 



THE BERK SHI RES AND BEYOND 

The "Acushnet," after eighteen months' cruising, 
reached the Marquesas "Islands, and there Melville, 
wearied with harsh fare and hard treatment, escaped 
from the Avhaler, only to lose liis way in a forest on the 
island of Nukahiva, the home of the Typee cannibals, 
with whom he spent several months in virtual Ijut 
friendly captivity. He was finally rescued by the cap- 
tain of an Australian whaler, which had touched at 
Nukahiva, and shipping as one of her sailors in due 
time reached Tahiti in the Society Islands. Thence 
he sailed to Honolulu, where he joined the crew of the 
frigate "United States," and in the autumn of 1844 
reached Boston. Two years later he published "Ty- 
pee," describing his experiences among the Nukahiva 
cannibals; and this was followed in 1849 by "Omoo" 
— two books which interpreted the romance and mys- 
tery of the South Sea and its groups of islands as they 
never had been interpreted before, and brought instant 
fame to their author. 

Thereafter for several years Melville's career was as 
brilliant as that of any prose writer who had yet ap- 
peared in America. " White- Jacket," based on his life 
aboard a man-of-war, was published in I80O, and in 
1851 he gave to the world "Moby Dick, or the White 

325 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Whale," an account of the whaler's hfe which so 
capable a judge as Clark Russell places at the very head 
of his books, and in a class by itself. But with the 
completion of "Moby Dick," Melville's important lit- 
erary work came practically to an end. Though his gifts 
were great, he had never learned to control them ; hence- 
forth he had nothing to say which the world cared to 
hear, and though he wrote and published other books 
all of his later writings were a puzzling mixture of 
philosophy and fantasy. 

Melville was married in 1847, and for thirteen years 
following 1850 resided on a farm near Pittsfield, but in 
1863 removed with his wife and children to New York, 
which thereafter remained his home. Though from 
1 806 to 1 885 he was employed in the New York custom 
house, his last years were passed in a self-sought seclu- 
sion which made room only for his books, his family 
and a few old friends, and so long did he survive his 
early fame that when he died, in 1891, the men and 
women of a new generation learned for the first time 
that such an author as Herman Melville had once won 
and held the favor of his fellows. 

Eight miles of hill and valley separate Pittsfiekl 
from Lenox, and if the visitor, making his way on foot 

3^26 



THE BERKS II IRES AND BEYOND 

to the latter town, follows the shore of the Ilousatoiiic 
southward by October Mountain, through Lenox Fur- 
nace, and past Laurel Lake, the walk is sure to linger 
long and pleasantly in memory. Though Nature has 
bestowed her favors with lavish hand on all the towns 
of the Berksliires, none has received richer gifts than 
Lenox, once a quiet hamlet but now a summer capital 
of wealth and fashion; and even to those who have 
made briefest pilgrimage to it the name ever after re- 
calls the vision of a noble country among the hills. 
" Here I am on the top of a hill in the valley of Lenox," 
wrote Fanny Kemble, in October of 183G, "with a view 
before my window which would not disgrace the Jura 
itself. Immediately sloping before me, the green hill- 
side sinks softly down to a small valley, filled with thick, 
rich wood, in the centre of which a little jewel-like lake 
lies gleaming. Beyond this valley the hills rise one 
above another to the horizon, where they scoop the sky 
with a brown, irregular outline, that the eye dwells on 
with ever-new delight, as its colors glow or vary with the 
ascending or descending sunlight, and all the shadowy 
procession of clouds. Ever since early morning troops 
of cloud and wandering showers of rain and the all 
prevailing sunbeams have chased each other over the 

327 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

wooded slopes, and down into the hollow where the lake 
lies sleeping, making a pageant far finer than the one 
Prosper© raised on his desert island." 

Lenox was the summer home of Fanny Kemble from 
1836 to 1853, and there Charlotte Cushman, when her 
career on the stage was ended, purchased and occupied 
a cottage which still bears her name. William Ellery 
Channing passed several summers in Lenox, delivering 
his last public address in its village church; and a farm- 
house now gone from the crest of Beecher Hill, to the 
east of the town, was for a number of years following 
1853 the summer home of Henry Ward Beecher. And 
it was just out of Lenox that Hawthorne lived during 
his period of greatest productivity. 

The romancer and his family came thither from 
Salem in the spring of 1850, and took up their residence 
in a " little old red house " which, until its destruction by 
fire in 1890, stood within a stone's throw of the northern 
.shore of Stockbridge Bowl, the name given to a tiny 
lake which nestles among the hills southwest of Lenox. 
The site of the vanished house overlooks one of the 
most picturesque of landscapes, and Mrs. Hawthorne's 
letters to her friends afford more than one delightful 
glimpse of the idyllic life she and her husband led in 

328 



THE BERK SHIRES AND BEYOND 

their modest home. "Mr. Hawthorne has been lying 
down in the sunshine," she writes to her mother in the 
late sinnmcr of 1851, "and Una and Julian have been 
making him look like the mighty Pan by covering his 
chin and breast with long grass-blades, that look like 
a verdant, venerable beard. Sometimes we go down 
to the woods near, and baby sleeps in the carriage to the 
music of the pine-tree murmurs and cricket chirpings, 
and once in a while of birds, while Una and Julian 
Ijuild piles of tiny sticks for the fairies' winter fuel, and 
papa and mama sit and muse in the breathless noon. 
I am glad you can dwell upon my lot with unalloyed 
delight; for certainly if ever there was a felicitous one it 
is mine. Unbroken, immortal love surrounds and per- 
vades me; we have extraordinary health, in addition to 
more essential elements of happiness; my husband 
transcends my best dream, and no one but I can tell 
what he must be, therefore. When I have cHmbed up 
to him, I think I shall find myself in the presence of 
the shining ones, for I can only say that every day he 
rises upon me like a sun at midnoon." 

A goodly throng of friends came to visit or to call 
at the little red house by Stockbridge Bowl, among 
them G. P. R. James, the English historian and novelist, 

329 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

who then Hved down by Stockbridge on the road to 
Monument Mountain; and the yet more welcome Her- 
man Melville, who often came from Pittsfield to walk 
and chat with his friend. But then as always Haw- 
thorne lived much with his children, and the year and a 
half spent in Lenox remain one of his son's most treas- 
ured recollections. "He made those days memorable 
to his children," writes Julian Hawthorne. "He made 
them boats to sail on the lake, and kites to fly in the air; 
he took them fishing and flower-gathering; and tried 
(unsuccessfully for the present) to teach them swim- 
ming. Mr. Melville used to ride or drive up, in the 
evenings, with his great dog, and the children used to 
ride on the dog's back. In short, the place was made 
a paradise for the small people. In the autumn they 
all went nutting, and filled a disused oven in the house 
with such bags upon bags of nuts as not a hundred 
children could have devoured during the ensuing 
winter. The children's father displayed extraordinary 
activity and energy on these nutting expeditions ; stand- 
ing at the foot of a tall walnut-tree, he would bid them 
turn their backs and cover their eyes with their hands; 
then they would hear, for a few seconds, a sound of 
rustling and scrambling, and, immediately after, a 

330 



THE BERKSHIRES AND BEYOND 

shout, whereupon they would uncover their eyes and 
gaze upwards ; and lo ! there was their father — who 
but an instant before, as it seemed, had been beside 
them — swaying and soaring high aloft on the topmost 
branches, a delightful mystery and miracle. And then 
down would rattle showers of ripe nuts, which the 
children would diligently pick up, and stuff into their 
capacious bags. It was all a splendid holiday; and 
they cannot remember when their father was not their 
playmate, or when they ever desired or imagined any 
other playmate than he." 

When Hawthorne settled in Lenox, "The Scarlet 
Letter" having lately come from the press, he was in 
the first flush of assured fame and popularity; and the 
amount of work which he put forth at this period shows 
how stimulating to his energies was the air of successful 
authorship. Between September, 1850, and January, 
1851, he began and finished his second greatest romance, 
"The House of the Seven Gables." Six months later 
he had completed "The Wonder Book," a charming 
adaptation of the classical tales of mythology to the 
understanding of the young, which, with its sequel, 
"Tanglewood Tales," has made him for half a century 
one of the authors best beloved by children. After 

331 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

tliis lie prepared for the press a volume of tales, " The 
Snow Image," which was ready by the first of Novem- 
ber. But while the scenery of the Berkshires charmed 
Hawthorne, he found the inland air enervating save in 
the bracing months of mid-winter; and so before the 
end of 1851 he left Lenox to spend a few months in 
West Newton and then to settle in a house and home of 
his own in Concord. 

Hawthorne justly heads the roll of Berkshire authors, 
but it was the writings of Catherine Maria Sedgwick 
which introduced the region to the world of letters. 
Miss Sedgwick sprang from a family long eminent and 
honored in New England, where her father and elder 
brother were leaders in politics and at the bar. Born 
in near by Stockbridge in 1789, she was carefully edu- 
cated, and then for thirty years taught in her turn. 
Her long life of seventy-eight years was passed mainly 
in Stockbridge and in Lenox, where she joined with her 
sister-in-law in conducting a school for girls of such 
excellence that for more than a generation it drew pupils 
from all parts of the country. Iler first book, " A New 
England Tale," published in 18'-22, made her a con- 
spicuous figure in a day of literary beginnings, and 
"Redwood" and "Hope Leslie" which followed it 

332 



THE BERKSIIIRES AND BEYOND 

won her an army of admirers both in her own land and 
across seas. These books, with the briefer social trac- 
tates which came from their author's pen in her last 
years, are nowadays more often praised than read; but 
they are filled with faitliful pictures of New England 
village life a century ago, and the historian will always 
prize them as human documents of the first importance. 

The birthplace of Miss Sedgwick, a roomy square- 
roofed mansion, stands on the main street of Stock- 
bridge, shaded by ancient Undens and set in a spacious 
lawn which reaches down to the Housatonic. Not far 
away is the site of the house which was for seven years 
the home of Jonathan Edwards, and in which he wrote 
his "Freedom of the Will." The Edwards house was 
torn down in 1900 to make way for a modern residence, 
— a great pity, for it well deserved to be preserved as 
a shrine of thought and letters, — but the preacher's 
study table is in the Stockbridge library, while near the 
church green stands a shaft of Scotch granite erected 
to his memorj' by his descendants. 

Cherry Cottage, just out of Stockbridge on the road 
to Great Barrington, was the birthplace of Mark Hop- 
kins, greatest of tlie presidents of Williams College; 
and on Prospect Hill, in another part of the town, the 

333 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

visitor is shown the site of the house which was long the 
home of the elder David Dudley Field, pastor of the 
Stockbridge church from 1819 to 1837, and the father of a 
family of brainful sons, each of whom went forth from 
the Berkshires to play a large part in the affairs of the 
world. The younger David Dudley Field won a fore- 
most place among jurists and did more than any other 
man of his time to modify and reform the judicial sys- 
tems of America and England; Stephen Johnson Field 
helped to build the commonwealth of California, and 
then sat for thirty-four years on the bench of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, a term longer than 
that of any other member of the court since its creation ; 
Cyrus West Field was the inspiring and directing spirit 
in the great work of laying the first Atlantic cable, while 
Henry Martyn Field, the youngest and now the only 
survivor of this remarkable group of brothers, was for 
four and forty years the owner and editor of the New 
York "Evangelist," but is now ending his days in 
honored retirement in his native town. 

A westward drive of eight miles carries one from 
Stockbridge across the Housatonic, along the base of 
Monument Mountain, and so to Great Barrington, 
where Bryant served his long apprenticeship in law and 

33-t 



THE BERK SHIRES AND BEYOND 

letters, and which in colony times was the home of that 
Samuel Hopkins whom Mrs. Stowe made the hero of 
"A Minister's Wooing/' A native of Connecticut and 
born in 1721, Hopkins was for twenty-six years pastor 
at Great Barrington, thence removing to Xew[)ort, 
Rhode Island, where he spent the remainder of his 
eighty -two years of life in usefulness and honor. A man 
of great ability, he was the friend and biographer of 
Edwards, and himself the author of a bulky "System 
of Theology," which for three generations helped to 
hold New England faithful to the tenets of Calvin. 

But Hopkins was gentler and more merciful than his 
creed, and, while nothing remains of his system of 
theology but a name, the world will not soon forget 
that his was one of the first earnest protests entered in 
America against the bondage of the negro, and that 
when to enter such a protest demanded moral heroism 
of the highest sort. He only assented to his State's 
ratification of the federal Constitution, which granted 
a twenty years' lease of life to the slave trade, because 
he preferred that to anarchy; and until the end of his 
days he ceased not to denounce the evil to his slave- 
holding congregation. He was also swift to atone for 
errors in his own conduct, and there remains an im- 

335 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

pressive tradition of how he wrought the conversion of 
a skeptical brother-in-law by quick and frank confes- 
sion of a fault. The two men parted at night in anger, 
but with the dawn of another day Hopkins knocked 
at and entered his kinsman's door. " Call your family 
together, brother Sanford," said he; and then followed 
a touching reconciliation, one of the results of which 
Avas the entrance of the brother-in-law, David Sanford, 
into the ministry, where for many years he served his 
generation. The Hopkins Memorial Manse, a splen- 
did parsonage presented a few years ago to the church 
of which Hopkins was the first pastor, serves to keep 
the lion-hearted preacher's memory green in the field 
of his early labors. 

The writer on leaving Great Barrington behind him 
shaped his way through Sheffield to the ancient town 
of Litchfield in Connecticut. Sleepy, elm-shaded 
Sheffield is the oldest of Berkshire villages, and was 
besides the birthplace of George Frederick Root, whose 
songs helped to fire loyal hearts during the Civil War. 
Root was born in 1820, passed his youth in Sheffield 
and North Reading, and in early manhood was a 
teacher of music in Boston, New York and the West. 
The echoes of Sumter had hardly died away before 

330 



THE BERKSHIRES AND BEYOM) 

Dr. Root thrilled the North with his song "The first 
gun is fired may God protect the right." Thereafter, 
as each event of the war was chronicled, he wrote other 
songs which ound instant path to the hearts of the 
people. One of these was "The Battle-Cry of Free- 
dom," prompted by President Lincoln's second call 
for troops, which became almost in a day the most 
popular song of the war, chanted not only by the people 
at home, but also by the soldiers in camp, on the march, 
and even on the field of conflict. Among the countless 
anecdotes which cluster around it is one of an Iowa 
regiment which went into battle in front of Mcksburg 
eight hundred strong and came out with a loss of more 
than half its number; but the survivors, torn and bleed- 
ing as they were, issued from the fight waving their 
stained banners and singing: "We'll rally round the 
flag, boys, we'll rally once again, shouting the battle- 
cry of freedom." 

Among Dr. Root's other w^ar songs, superb in their 
expression of loyalty and courage, were "Tramp, 
Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching," "Just Be- 
fore the Battle, Mother," and "The Vacant Chair." 
Six and thirty songs in all came from his pen between 
1861 and I860, and helped, no less than sword and gun, 

337 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

to assure final victory to the Union cause. But his 
muse was not always a militant one: he was the com- 
poser of many cantatas and operettas, and he also wrote 
a great number of still popular hymns and songs of 
home life — among them " The Shining Shore," " Hazel 
Dell," and "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother." His last 
years were divided between Chicago and Bailey's 
Island, in Casco Bay, where he had his summer home. 
Death came to him at the latter place in August, 1895, 
and he was laid to rest in the old burial ground of North 
Reading. On the shaft which marks his grave might 
well be carved the lines: 

"The many may lead hosts to battle. 
To the many war's honor belongs ; 
But the few touch the lioarts of the people. 
The few give the people their songs." 

Sheffield was also the birthplace of Orville Dewey, 
the eminent Unitarian divine. Dewey was born in 
1794, and, early resolving upon a career in the ministry, 
was grounded in the theology of Calvin and Edwards 
by Dr. Ephruim Judson, for two and twenty years 
pastor of the Sheffield churcli. Dr. Judson was the 
most eccentric of old Berkshire worthies, — he often 
delivered his sermons sitting, and now and then on 

33g 



THE BERKSIIIRES AND BEYOXD 

sultry Sabbath mornings would announce a long hymn 
and while the singing was in progress seek relief from 
the heat in the open air, — but his orthodoxy was of 
the strictest sort, and by its very severity impelled his 
pupil to broader and gentler lines of thought. And so 
young Dewey, though he passed through Williams 
College and was duly graduated at Andover, soon for- 
sook the creed of his fathers for Unitarianism. He 
served for a time as assistant to Dr. Channing in Boston, 
and from 1823 until 1833 preached to a Unitarian con- 
gregation in New Bedford. During his best and ripest 
years, from 1835 to 1848, he was pastor of what is now 
the Church of the Messiah in New York. He returned, 
however, to end his days in Sheffield, where a tasteful 
library building erected by his descendants now bears 
witness to his and their loving interest in the old town. 
Litchfield like Sheffield is set upon a hill, and like 
Sheffield boasts a history of nearly two hundred years. 
Sturdy Oliver Wolcott, signer of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, dwelt for many years in Litchfield, and 
was so fond a lover of his home that, when a British 
diplomat praised the wit and beauty of Mrs. Wolcott, 
declaring that she would be a brilliant figure at the 
court of St. James, the husband proudly made answer, 

339 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

"She shines even on Litclifield Hill, sir!" Another 
long time resident of Litchfield was that stout soldier 
of the Revolution, Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge, who 
served as aide-de-camp to Washington and as Andre's 
custodian walked with the latter to the scaffold. The 
former homes of Wolcott and Tallmadge are still stand- 
ing in Litchfield, and so is the fine old house in which 
for nearly forty years Tapping Reeve, some time chief 
justice of Connecticut, conducted the first law school 
established in America. This institution drew pupils 
from every State in the Union, and numbered among 
its graduates six score congressmen, senators, governors, 
judges and cabinet ministers. John C. Calhoun studied 
for several years under Judge Reeve, and two elms 
which he planted before his departure from Litchfield 
have grown with the years into grand and graceful 
trees — a pleasant memorial of the great Southron. 

Lyman Beecher, settling in Litclifield in 1810, at the 
age of thirty-five, preached for sixteen years to its 
people; and there his children, Harriet and Henry 
Ward, were born and passed their childhood. Mrs. 
Stowe's "Poganuc People," written towards the end 
of her literary career, is an engaging picture of her early 
days in the Litchfield manse; and her brother was never 

340 



THE BERKSIIIRES AND BEYOND 

more delightful than when recalling the incidents of his 
boyhood on Litchfield Hill, one of which deserves a 
place in this chronicle. The elder Beecher, so runs 
the story, when calling on a member of his congregation, 
expressed admiration for a fine calf and was told that 
he could take it home provided he could catch the lively 
creature. This he did at the end of a hot chase, carried 
it home in his wagon, and tied it securely in the barn. 
But when Henry heard of the new arrival, he sped from 
the house to the barn, and, curious to see if the animal 
was really as lively as described, untied the rope that 
bound it, when, like a flash, the calf dashed out of the 
door, and in another instant disappeared over the brow 
of the hill. Half a century afterwards the younger 
Beecher related the incident at an evening meeting in 
Brooklyn in illustration of one of the points in his dis- 
course. "Yes, Henry Ward," interjected one of his 
auditors, in a jocular aside, " and that is what you have 
been doing ever since — letting loose that which your 
father thought he had made fast!" And there was a 
volume of truth in this witty rejoinder. 

John Pierpont, preacher and reformer, was a native 
of Litchfield, and so was that far greater man and 
preacher, Horace Bushnell. Born in 1785 and grad- 

341 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

uated at Yale in 1804, Pierpont in the course of his long 
life of eighty-one years was a teacher, a lawyer, a mer- 
chant, a minister, an army chaplain and finally a clerk 
in the Treasury Department at Washington. He is 
best remembered, however, for his fiery and unswerv- 
ing support of the anti-slavery cause, which drove him, 
after a quarter of a century's service, from the pulpit of 
the Hollis Street Church in Boston, and for a volume 
of verses that prove him a poet of no mean order. His 
longest poem, "Airs of Palestine," first published in 
1816, abounds in delicate imagery and in the sonorous 
rhyme that Milton loved, while many of his shorter 
pieces, such as "Passing Away" and "The Departed 
Child," are equal to the best work of most of his con- 
temporaries. John Pierpont Morgan, the banker, is a 
son of Pierpont's daughter, and perpetuates in his own 
the name of the poet. 

Horace Bushnell was born in 1802, and was the 
oldest child of a family which traced its descent through 
some of the first settlers of Saybrook to Huguenot refu- 
gees who had fled to England — a hardy, strong-limbed 
race from which he inherited that best of capital to 
begin life — a sound constitution. When he was 
three years old his parents removed from Litchfield to 



THE B E R K S H I R E S AND BE Y O X D 

the neighboring town of Preston, where his childhood 
and youth were divided between the schools of the 
countryside, and labor in the woolen factory and on 
the f a m conducted by his father. He entered Yale 
in his twenty-second year, and after his graduation 
found employment on the staff of the New York "Jour- 
nal of Commerce," soon, however, retiring from news- 
paper work to begin the study of law in New Haven. 
Then he accepted an invitation to become a tutor at 
Yale, and while thus employed completed the course 
for admission to the bar, intending ultimately to begin 
practice in the West. But his career was to follow 
widely different lines; during his tutorship a revival 
occurred among the students of the college, and before 
it ran its course he was led to reconsider the question 
of his calling and to decide that it was his duty to be- 
come a preacher. Accordingly, he entered the theo- 
logical seminary at Yale, whence in due time he was 
graduated, and in May, 1833, as pastor of the North 
Church in Hartford, he began the work which has left 
so deep a mark on the reUgious life of his country. 



$43 



Chapter XII 

Connecticut Wits and Worthies 

On the morrow of his visit to Bushnell's birthplace 
the writer stood before the site of his last home 
in Winthrop Street, Hartford. Bushnell dwelt in 
Hartford from 1833 until his death in 187G, and for 
twenty-six of these forty-three years preached from 
the pulpit of the North Church the sermons which still 
influence an uncounted multitude of men and women 
who never felt the charm of his spoken word. How 
great was that charm many who were moved by it in 
other days still survive to bear witness. "He can be 
fully appreciated," writes Dr. Munger, "only by those 
who heard him preach. Sermon and delivery fitted 
each other like die and image. The sincerity of the 
word was matched by the quiet confidence of his bear- 
ing, and the poetry of his diction was sustained by the 
music of his voice, which always fell into a rhythmic 
cadence. The flights of his imagination were not 
rhetorical strivings but the simple rehearsals of what 
he saw. His efl'ectiveness was peculiar. If he gained 

344 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

any hearing at all, he won the consent of the whole man, 
■ — not agreement always, but intellectual and moral 
sympathy. He was the most democratic and most 
human of preachers, and at the same time one of the 
loftiest and most spiritual. He spoke to men on equal 
terms and in a direct way, taking them into his con- 
fidence and putting himself in their place, feeling their 
needs, sharing their doubts, and reasoning the ques- 
tions out as one of them." 

The message which Bushnell thus delivered to his 
fellows breathed a regenerating spirit into the narrow 
theology of his day, and, though his splendid fidelity 
to the conviction that often doubt is the only way to 
reach an assured faith caused him to be put on trial for 
heresy, the charges fell through in the end, and hence- 
forth he was for New England the prophet of that larger 
religious consciousness which has caused the Christian 
faith to bloom again in new forms of life and beauty. 
Nor was his the usual fate of the prophet, for in later 
life he was often invited to pulpits that had long been 
shut against him, and his last years of invalidism and 
weakness were cheered by the knowledge that many of 
those who once bitterly opposed him had come to see 
that he had torn down not for the sake of destroying, 

345 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

but only to clear the way for a larger and nobler struc- 
ture in which might be enshrined all that was true and 
lasting in the old forms. 

The fame of the group of versifiers and satirists who 
flourished in Hartford during and immediately after 
the Revolution is now a faded one, but when Bushnell 
began his labors there the Hartford Wits, as they were 
called, still loomed large on the literary horizon. One 
of the members of the group was Lemuel Hopkins, a 
physician of high repute and superior natural parts 
who practiced in Hartford from 1783 until his death in 
1801; another was Colonel David Humphreys, who 
survived a good deal of hard fighting under Washing- 
ton, to become a maker of bad poetry and an excellent 
minister to Portugal; but the most considerable figures 
in this coterie were John Trumbull and Joel Barlow. 

Trumbull was a Yale graduate and tutor, who 
studied law in the office of John Adams, and eventually 
established himself at Hartford, where he became 
eminent as an advocate and judge. His last years 
were spent in Detroit, and there he died in 1831 at the 
age of eighty-one. He began his literary career in 177(2 
with "The Progress of Dulness," a versified satire on 
th« limitations of education and culture in the colonies, 

346 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

and after his settlement in Hartford he contributed 
with Hopkins, Barlow and the rest to " The Anarchiad," 
the title given to a series of purported extracts from an 
ancient epic, which were published from time to time 
in a newspaper, and did good service in opposing and 
ridiculing the political follies of the period. Trum- 
bull's chief claim to remembrance, however, rests on 
his Hudibrastic poem of " McFingal," begun in 1776 
and completed in 1782, which was long regarded both 
at home and abroad as America's masterpiece in that 
class of literature. Though now more respected than 
read "McFingal" remains, the work of the pub- 
licists excepted, the most representative production of 
the Revolutionary period; and its pages, packed as 
they are with robust patriotism and boisterous wit, 
will never be neglected by those who wish to study 
at first hand the motives and passions which swayed 
men in the birth years of the republic. 

Joel Barlow was born in 17,54 in a house which 
within recent years was still standing in the western 
Connecticut town of Redding. Graduated at Yale in 
1778, he served for a time as a chaplain in AVashington's 
army, but soon withdrew from the ministry, and with 
his newly won bride settled in Hartford, where he be- 

347 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

came a lawyer and editor, and, as one of the Club of 
Wits, practiced verse-making with such diligence that 
he was able, in 1787, to publish his "Vision of Colum- 
bus," a narrative poem of nearly five thousand lines. 
Then he sailed for Europe, and for many years re- 
sided in France and England, where he became the 
friend of many of the leaders of revolutionary thought, 
and wrote numerous political books and pamphlets, 
one of which, "Advice to the Privileged Orders," had 
the honor of being suppressed by the British govern- 
ment. At the same time, being a man of large practi- 
cal talents, he acquired, through speculation, what in 
those days was counted a handsome fortune. 

Finally, after eighteen years of absence. Barlow re- 
turned to America, built a beautiful countrj' house near 
to Washington, and in luxurious retirement elaborated 
his "Vision of Columbus" into a colossal epic, pub- 
lished, in 1807, under the title of "The Columbiad." 
Four years later he again went abroad, this time as 
American minister to the court of Napoleon. He went, 
however, to his death, for journeying to meet the 
Emperor at Wilna, he was caught in the whirl and 
crash of the retreat from Moscow, and succumbing to 
fever and exposure, in December, 1812, found a grave 

348 



CONNECTICUT \YITS AND WORTHIES 

in an out-of-the-way village of Poland. The story of 
the life thus brought to an end is far more interesting 
than anything that ever came from Barlow's pen. He 
managed the heroic couplet with no small degree of 
skill, and lifted himself now and then into passages of 
dignity and strength, but " The Columbiad " as a whole 
is slow-moving, inflated and so intolerably dull that it 
tempts the reader to apply to it the curious declaration 
of its author that Homer's " existence has really proved 
one of the signal misfortunes of mankind." 

Barlow, however, wrote one poem that has withstood 
the wear of the years — " The Hasty Pudding," a mock- 
heroic in three short and racy cantos, born of the fact 
that a dish of potenta served to him one summer day 
in Savoy recalled verse-impelling memories of the 
favorite dish to which he had long been a stranger. 
That, and his brave defense of Thomas Paine, when 
he stood most in need of defenders, should serve to keep 
Barlow's memory green, even though his heavy epic 
rests unopened on library shelves. 

^Vhen Barlow edited a newspaper in Hartford he had 
for a collaborator a certain Noah "NVebstcr, who long 
aften\ard was to win fame as the maker of the first 
American dictionary. The elm-shaded house in which 

349 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Webster was bom in 1758 is still standing in West Hart- 
ford, but shorn now of the broad acres of farm land 
which once surrounded it. He was graduated at Yale 
in 1778, and began life as a schoolmaster and maker of 
text-books, one of which, his " Elementary Spelling- 
Book," reached a larger sale than any other single work 
by an American author. After that he was a lawyer 
in Hartford, an editor in New York, and the holder, 
wherever he chanced to be, of original opinions on a 
multitude of subjects which he discussed in books, 
pamphlets and periodicals, with earnestness of con- 
viction and shrewd practical wisdom. These discus- 
sions, however, brought him small return in money, 
and he was a poor man chiefly dependent for support 
on the sales of his spelling-book, when, at the age of 
forty-eight, he sat down to the great work of his life — 
the compiling of a full and comprehensive dictionary 
of the English language. " However arduous the task, 
and however feeble my powers," he wrote in announc- 
ing his purpose, " a thorough conviction of the impor- 
tance and necessity of tlie undertaking has overcome 
my fears and objections, and determined me to make 
an effort to dissipate the charm of veneration for foreign 
authors which fascinates the minds of men in this coun- 

S50 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

try and holds them in the chains of illusion. In the 
investigation of this subject great labor is to be sus- 
tained, and numberless difficulties encountered; but 
with a humble dependence on divine favor for the pre- 
servation of my life and health, I shall prosecute the 
work with diligence, and execute it with a fidelity suited 
to its importance." 

This was a brave promise, and twenty years of heroic 
and almost continuous labor were expended by Webster, 
— labor performed in the face of the jeers and ridicule 
of those who saw in his self-imposed task only the im- 
possible dream of a whimsical visionary, — before he 
was able to give to the world the first edition of his 
"American Dictionary of the English language," in 
two quarto volumes. lie began compiling the dic- 
tionary in New Haven, continued it in Amherst, whence, 
in 1812, he removed for economy's sake, and completed 
it in Cambridge, England, whither he had gone to con- 
sult books not to be had in America. Published three 
years after his return, it passed through one revision at 
Webster's hands in 1840, and when he died, in 1843, 
he was still at work upon it. Great success attended 
it from the first, and it is still published, being revised 
from time to time and edited according to the principle* 

351 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

laid down by its originator. Webster's single-handed 
task was that of the pioneer, and full of meaning for 
the future. Indeed, it is not too much to say that the 
great works of a lexicographical and encyclopaedic char- 
acter which now witness to the world the enterprise of 
American publishers and the thoroughness of American 
scholars would have been impossible had not the Hart- 
ford schoolmaster prepared the way for them. 

Lydia Huntley Sigourney, one of the most prolific 
verse-makers of her time, dwelt in Hartford from 1819 
until her death in 1865, at the age of seventy-four. Her 
prose and verse fill nearly three score volumes, which 
in their collected form are the terror and despair of the 
modern reader, but the memory of her sweet, pure 
womanhood survives, and will long draw pilgrims to 
the stately house which was her home, and which, as 
of old, looks down upon Little River, coiling its way 
through the city, and upon the beautiful park named 
in honor of Horace Bushnell. George Denison Pren- 
tice, best remembered as the witty editor of the Louis- 
ville " Journal," also began his career in Hartford, and 
there, in 1828, set up the "New England Review," a 
literary weekly which at the end of two years passed 
under the direction of John Greenleaf Whittier. A 

352 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

business structure at the corner of Grove and Main 
Streets, Hartford, now covers the site of the house which 
was for a year or more the Quaker poet's home, but 
one wishes it could have been spared by the years, for 
there he gave the finishing touches to his first volume 
of verse, 'Legends of New England." 

There, too, " a shy lad in homespun clothes of Quaker 
cut," Whittier saw the beginning and the end of the 
one romance of his life. Cornelia Russ was the young- 
est child of a leading citizen of Hartford, and a beauti- 
ful girl of seventeen when the heart of the poet yielded 
to her uncommon charms. On the eve of his departure 
from Hartford he sent her an offer of marriage. '' I 
could not leave town," he wrote in simple and manly 
fashion, "without asking an interview with you. I 
know that my proposal is abrupt, and I cannot but fear 
that it will be unwelcome. But you will pardon me. 
About to leave Hartford for a distant part of the country, 
I have ventured to make a demand, for which under 
any other circumstances I should be justly censurable. 
I feel that I have indeed no claims on your regard. 
But I would hope, almost against any evidence to the 
contrary, you might not altogether discourage a feeling 
which has long been to me as a new existence. 1 would 

353 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

hope that in my absence one heart would respond with 
my own, one bright eye grow brighter at the mention 
of a name, which has never been, and I trust never will 
be connected with dishonor, and which, if the ambition 
which now urges onward shall continue in vigorous 
exercise, shall yet be known widely and well, and whose 
influence shall be lastingly felt. But this is dreaming, 
and it may only call forth a smile. If so, I have too 
high an opinion of your honorable feelings to suppose 
even for a moment that you would make any use of 
your advantage derogatory to the character of a high- 
minded and ingenuous girl. I leave town on Saturday 
Can you allow of an interview this evening or on that 
of Friday. If, however, you cannot consistently afford 
me the pleasure of seeing you, I have only to resign 
hopes dear to me as life itself, and carry with me here- 
after the curse of disappointed feeling." 

The girl could not promise to become the poet's wife, 

— perhaps the stern creed of Calvin held them apart, 

— and two days after his letter was written Whittier 
left Hartford forever. Thereafter, the hopes that had 
come to naught filled a sealed chamber in his heart, 
while she whom he loved faithfully kept his secret. 
Though much sought by eager wooers, Cornelia Russ 

354 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

died unmarried at the age of twenty-eight, a few months 
before Whittier wrote the pensive and beautiful poem 
of " Memories," of which she was the heroine. There 
is no evidence, however, that her lover ever heard of 
her death. He thinks of her in " Memories " as still 
among the living, and when, nearly half a century later, 
he placed the poem at the head of his " Subjective " 
verse, his heart was still true to her, but gave no sign 
that he knew hers had ceased to beat. 

When Whittier was editor of the "New England 
Review" a boy was growing toward manhood in the 
village of East Hartford, just across the Connecticut 
from Hartford, who long afterward was to share with 
him the lyric laurels of the Civil War. Henry Howard 
Brownell was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 
18'20, but moved at an early age to East Hartford, 
which ever after remained his home, and where, fol- 
lowing a brief excursion into the law, delicate health 
and an instinct for letters impelled him to the life of a 
scholarly recluse. A volume of verse issued in 1847 
reflects his tastes and environment, but the first shot 
of the Civil War changed him on the instant into an 
impassioned singer of battle lyrics. One of these, a 
rhymed version of Farragut's orders to his fleet, drew 

3o5 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

the Admiral's attention to the writer, and led him to 
make Brownell his private secretary. And thus, an 
acting ensign on Farragut's flagship, the "Hartford," 
the bard of battle witnessed the capture of Mobile, 
and wove the fury and stress of that conflict into his 
splendid "Bay Fight." Brownell's "War Lyrics," pub- 
lished in 1866, contains this poem and a dozen others, 
which by their vibrant diction and breathless rush of 
incident prove Brownell a born ballad-maker. His 
singing, however, ended with the conflict that had been 
its inspiration, and his last years were mainly silent 
ones. These were passed in his quiet riverside home, 
and there he died in 1872 after long and painful ill- 
ness. His grave is in the East Hartford cemetery, and 
his former home, by a queer lapse of fate, has become 
the hotel of the village. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe passed a portion of her girl- 
hood in Hartford as a pupil-teacher in the school con- 
ducted by her elder sister Catherine, and more than 
thirty years later she returned, with her husband and 
children, to spend her remaining days in the town. A 
grove of oaks on the bank of Park river, in the section 
of Hartford now known as Glenwood, had been a 
favorite resort of her girlhood, and there in 1862 aho 

3JG 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

planned and built a picturesque, many gabled house, 
which afforded, with its wealth of shade and shrubbery, 
a charming place of residence. There she passed ten 
happy years, and there were written a number of her 
six and thirty volumes, among them " Pink and White 
Tyranny," " My Wife and I," and "Old Town Folks," 
which, considered as pure literature, was, perhaps, the 
best book that ever came from her pen. Soon, how- 
ever, the needs of the growing city caused factories to 
spring up in the neighborhood, and to escape their 
encroachments in 1872 she bought a house on Forrest 
Street in which she dwelt during the rest of her life. 
The once beautiful home at Glen wood, after long and 
hard ser^'^ce as a tenement, has now become a stor- 
age-house for the huge factory which dwarfs and 
shadows it. 

Mrs. Stowe's last home in Forrest Street is a modest 
structure of brick, with a gable rising from its center 
roof, and dormers looking out on either side. It faces 
the east and the sunrise, and the lawn which separates 
it from the street is planted with shrubbery, and in 
summer is bright with flowers. Here she brought her 
career as an author to a close, with "We and Our 
Neighbors," "A Dog's Mission," and " Poganuc Peo- 

357 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

pie," and here she laid down her pen to charm with 
it no more. Her husband died in 1886, and there- 
after, tenderly cared for by her children, her own life 
became only a patient waiting for the end. "My sun 
has set," she wrote to a friend as the shadows gathered 
about her. " The time of work for me is over. I have 
written all my words and thought all my thoughts, and 
now I rest in the flickering light of the dying embers." 
Later still she became "like a little child," and the 
final summons was but the release of a spirit that had 
long been asleep. She died on July 1, 1896, at the age 
of eighty-five, and, as we know, was buried beside her 
husband and the children who had preceded her in 
the burial ground at Andover. 

During the greater part of her residence in Forrest 
Street Mrs. Stowe had Charles Dudley Warner and 
Samuel Langhorne Clemens for her nearest neighbors. 
Both of these gifted men were also Hartford authors 
only by right of adoption. Born in 1829 in Plainfield, 
on the edge of the Berkshires, Warner passed his early 
youth in the neighboring town of Claremont, where 
he experienced the incidents and lived among the 
scenes that he afterward described in " Being a Boy." 
He was graduated at Hamilton College in 1851, and 

358 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

during the next few years tried his hand at many 
things, choosing the law at first as his profession and 
opening an oflfice in Chicago. He was soon drawn, 
however, to the vocation of a journalist, and in 1860 
became one of the editors of the Hartford " Press." 
A little later he was made its editor-in-chief, and when 
in 1867 it was merged with the older "Courant" he 
went on the staff of the latter journal, continuing his 
association with it during the remainder of his life. 

Warner's more distinctly literary career began in 
1870 with the publication of " My Summer in a Gar- 
den," which chronicled with original and playful humor 
the experiences and misadventures of an amateur gar- 
dener. The immediate success of this first venture in 
authorship established him as a popular favorite, and 
was followed by a number of agreeable books recording 
travel-experience at home and abroad, and by " Back- 
Log Studies," "Baddeck and That Sort of Thing" and 
other volumes of essays filled with delicate yet thought- 
ful humor and the flavor of a delightful personality. 
He also wrote a life of Captain John Smith, and began 
the series of "American Men of Letters," of which he 
was the first editor, with a sympathetic study of Wash- 
ington Irving. Late in life he turned his hand to 

3j9 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

fiction, and wrote in quick succession "Their Pilgrim- 
age," "A Little Journey in the World," "The Golden 
House" and "That Fortune." These four volumes, 
the last of which was finished in 1900, a few months 
before his death, show easy command of the story- 
teller's art, and keen and kindly insight into human 
life and nature. 

The world prefers to remember Warner, however, as 
an essayist, in whose writings wit and humor were 
happily wedded to high and earnest thought; and it 
is safe to predict that in his goodly list of books the 
ones that will longest find readers are " My Summer 
in a Garden," " Back-Log Studies " and " Being a Boy." 
These were his distinctive contribution to our litera- 
ture, and give him a place in its history close to if 
lower than those of Irving and Holmes. The house 
which made him the neighbor of Mrs. Stowe, — a 
roomy structure, colonial in style, and standing unin- 
closed among trees, — was Warner's last home. His 
earlier home, which also was the birthplace of "My 
Summer in a Garden" and "Back-Log Studies," was 
a modest brick cottage in a remoter part of Hartford, 
where the town looks into the country. 

If Charles Dudley Warner was a fine exemplar of 
360 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 



New England breeding and scholarship, Samuel Lang- 
home Clemens, better known to the world as Mark 
Twain, is an equally typical product of Western life 
and conditions. He was born in Florida, Missouri, 
in 1835, left school at twelve to enter a country printing- 
office, and at twenty-two became a pilot on the Mis- 
sissippi. This calling he followed for four years, but 
abandoned it at the opening of the Civil War, and a 
little later became private secretary to his brother, then 
territorial secretary of Nevada. The two crossed the 
plains in the overland coach, and the younger brother 
had no sooner reached Nevada than he dropped cler- 
ical work to go into mining. His ventures as a miner, 
however, yielded him little profit save in experience, 
and in 1862 he became local editor of the Virginia City 
"Enterprise," to which he contributed, under the pen 
name of Mark Twain, the old Mississippi boatswain's 
call for two fathoms— twelve feet. 

Two years later Clemens was called to San Fran- 
cisco as city editor of the "Morning Call," and in 
1866 visited Hawaii as correspondent of the Sacra- 
mento "Union." He took to the lecture platform on 
his return from the islands, and then, journeying East 
by way of the Isthmus, in 1867 joined an excursion to 

361 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

Europe and the Holy Land as correspondent of the 
" Alta California " of San Francisco. The party visited 
the principal ports of the Mediterranean and the Black 
Sea, and from this trip grew "The Innocents Abroad," 
a volume of extravagant humor which when published 
in 1869 won for its author instant recognition as a 
literary force of the first order. A hundred thousand 
copies were sold the first year, and it still remains his 
most popular book. Following close upon this success 
Clemens married, and in 1871 he took up his residence 
in Hartford, living first in a hired cottage in Forrest 
Street, but soon removing to a house of his own in 
Farmington Avenue. This house, a multi-gabled, 
many-chimneyed structure of brick laid in fanciful 
courses and at various angles, was built from the 
author's own plans, and so is as unique and individual 
as its builder. It stands on a knoll well back from the 
street, and reaching out from it on the west, and sloping 
down to a little valley, cut in twain by a diminutive 
river, stretches a grove of fine old chestnut trees. 

Here Clemens lived for three and twenty years, and 
here, or in his earlier Hartford home, were written 
"Roughing It," "The Gilded Age," "Tom Sawyer," 
"A Tramp Abroad," "The Prmce and the Pauper," 

362 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 



"Huckleberry Finn," and the other books which bore 
eloquent if mirthful witness to his gradual but sure 
development from a maker of rough and ready humor 
into the philosopher and prophet of humanity. The 
Hst of his published works now numbers a score of 
titles, and on the eve of old age his pen is still a busy 
one. How a series of luckless investments swept away 
the savings of half a lifetime, and left' :Mark Twain 
at skty loaded by debts incurred by others; how by 
heroic efforts they were paid to the last dollar and a 
second fortune earned in the years when most men have 
ceased from labor — these are things whose adequate 
recital must be left to him who in future years shall 
set forth the full story of a career which has been justly 
termed one of the romances of American life and let- 
ters. And to the future also and properly belongs the 
final estimate of the worth and quality of his work as 
an author. Such an estimate may deny him a place 
among the great humorists of all time, but the years 
can hold no greater surprise than that Mulberry 
Sellers and Huckleberry Finn should be forgotten. 

The last of the journeys which gave excuse for these 
pages carried the svriler out of Hartford, down the 
western shore of the Connecticut, and so to New Haven, 

3G3 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



and to the house in Water Street, that city, which Avas 
in turn the home of Benedict Arnold and of Noah 
Webster. Arnold built the house in question a few 
years before the Revolution, when he was a prosperous 
New Haven merchant, and a brilliant figure in the 
business and social life of the little college town. It 
was confiscated with the rest of his property after he 
attempted to betray his country, and in 1798 passed 
into the hands of Webster, who owned and occupied 
it for fourteen years. There the self-willed scholar 
labored on his dictionary; there he planned the re\ision 
of the Bible which he fondly believed would constitute 
his surest claim to remembrance; and there, no doubt, 
he often gave welcome to another scholar whose thirst 
for knowledge equaled his own. 

This was Timothy Dwight, the hero like Webster 
of a career possible only in the America of a hundred 
years ago. A grandson of Jonathan Edwards, Dwight 
was born at Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1752, 
graduated at Yale at an early age, and for several years 
was a tutor in that institution. When the Revolution 
broke out he entered the patriot army as chaplain, but 
his father's death compelled him to resign his commis- 
sion in 1778, and for five years he helped his mother to 

364 



CONNECTICtT WITS AND WORTHIES 

manage her estate. He hesitated for a time between 
the law and the ministry as a permanent vocation, 
but finally chose the latter, and in 1783 was settled 
as pastor of a church in Greenfield, Conn., where 
he soon proved himself an eloquent and profound 
preacher and also made leisure to conduct a successful 
school and to put forth several volumes of verse. Be- 
fore he turned forty he had become the best known 
divine in New England, and when in 1795 the presi- 
dency of Yale was left vacant he was promptly chosen 
to fill it. The choice was a wise one, and until his 
death in 1817 he directed the college with such large 
and sure grasp of affairs and such eminent and abiding 
success that the place it now holds in our educational 
system is due in chief part to his labors. 

It was, however, as a verse-maker that Dwight was 
regarded by men of his own time as most deserving 
of honor. He began his career as a poet with "The 
Conquest of Canaan," a long epic written while he 
was a tutor at Yale, but not published until 1785, and 
during his Greenfield pastorate he composed and gave 
to the world two other elaborate poems, "The Triumph 
of Infidelity " and " Greenfield Hill." All three con- 
tain passages as good as most of the decasyllabic 

365 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

verse of that period, but on the whole their dulness is 
accurately proportioned to their length ; and the modern 
reader turns their pages with growing wonder that 
they should have once been hailed as proving their 
author the greatest of American poets. Along with 
Dwight's " Theology Explained and Defended," in five 
portly volumes, they are now deservedly neglected save 
by students. There are, however, two productions of 
the worthy doctor which have happily survived the 
blasts of time — his hymn " I love thy Kingdom, Lord," 
and the four volumes of his " TraA^els in New England 
and New York." The latter work, published a few 
years after his death, is the homely yet delightful record, 
rich in local history and diverting anecdote, of the 
energetic president's vacation-time travels in his gig. 
It has long been out of print, and the publisher who 
gives it a new dress and a new lease of life will deserve 
well of his day and generation. 

Famham College in 1860 displaced the house which 
was Dwight's New Haven home. Dwight, with other 
of the presidents of Yale, takes his rest in the Grove 
Street cemetery, an ancient burial ground that separates 
the college buildings from the business section of the 

town; and there also are the graves of Lyman Beecher 

•M)6 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

and Noah Webster, and of Leonard and Delia Bacon. 
Leonard Bacon was the son of that David Bacon who 
planted the first settlement of New England men in 
the Western Reserve of Ohio. The elder Bacon had 
been in a yet earlier time a missionary to the Ojibbeway 
Indians, and the son was born in 1802 in that part of 
the wilderness of the Northwest Territory where now 
stands the city of Detroit. Leonard Bacon's youth, 
however, was passed mainly in New England. He 
was graduated at Yale in 1820, entered the ministry, 
and in 1824i became pastor of the First Congregational 
Church of New Haven. 

Thenceforth and until his death in 1881 Bacon was 
a dominant and masterful force in the religious thought 
of his time, the defender, both within and without the 
church, of every cause that made for liberty and pro- 
gress. His convictions were a part of his being, to be 
surrendered only with his life, and in the pulpit, on 
the platform, and in book, pamphlet and periodical 
he gave them earnest and trenchant expression. No 
man, indeed, more effectively voiced the awakened 
consciousness of the North to the wrongfulness of 
negro bondage, and a collection of papers to which he 
gave the title "Slavery Discussed in Occasional Es- 

367 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

says" perhaps did more than Garrison's "Liberator" 
to assure the final extinction of the evil. One of those 
who read this book when it came from the press in 
1846 was Abraham Lincoln. The young Western law- 
yer found in its lucid arguments and moderate spirit 
the light he long had been seeking; and its influence 
upon him, and thus upon the history of a critical and 
eventful era, can be easily traced in his great debates 
with Douglas. "When, many years after the little 
book had been forgotten by the public," writes Bacon's 
son, "and slavery had fallen before the President's 
proclamation, it appeared from Lincoln's own decla- 
ration that he owed to that book his definite, reasonable, 
and irrefragable views of the slavery question, my 
father felt ready to sing the Nunc dimittis." 

The memory of this great and good man will not 
grow dim with the years; but even more interesting to 
the literary student is the life story of his gifted and 
unfortunate sister. Delia Bacon was born in Ohio, 
in 1811, and passed her girlhood in Hartford, where 
she was for several years a pupil in the school conducted 
by Catherine Beecher. The daughter of a widow with 
six children, she was compelled at an early age to gain 
her own living, and, though her first efforts to do so 

368 



I 



•1 

I 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 



with her pen were failures, success came to her when, 
following the example of Margaret Fuller, she began 
to hold parlor receptions, where pupils who had finished 
their regular courses of instruction could be directed 
in their future studies. She brought to this work 
agreeable gifts of person and power to impart her own 
enthusiasm to others, and for a number of years at 
New Haven, Hartford and Cambridge she reigned the 
intellectual queen of New England drawing-rooms. 
" Her pupils had no books," writes one who heard her, 
" only a pencil and some paper. She sat before them, 
her noble countenance lighted with enthusiasm, her 
hands now holding a book from which she read an 
extract, now pressing for a moment the thoughtful 
brow. She knew both how to pour in knowledge and 
how to draw out thought." Audiences of a hundred 
often gathered around her to receive instruction, and 
her courses were the means of quickening the brightest 
women of her time. 

These were the golden days in the life of Delia 
Bacon. They came to an end about 1852, and there- 
after her thought was more and more directed to the 
misguided theory that Shakespeare did not write the 
plays attributed to him, until to prove it became her 

369 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

absorbing purpose. In 1853 she went to England to 
prosecute her studies in this field, and four years later, 
through the aid of Hawthorne, then consul at Liverpool, 
found a publisher for her " Philosophy of the Plays of 
Shakespeare Unfolded," a stout octavo of nearly seven 
hundred pages, but dealing with only a single phase 
of her attempted redistribution of the authorship of 
the plays. Before this her scanty funds had given out, 
and, estranged from her family by her great delusion, 
her living expenses for many months were mainly dis- 
charged by Hawthorne, who was never more kindly 
and noble than in his relations with this ill-starred 
child of genius. Soon after her book appeared her 
mind, long strained to the breaking point, also gave 
way, and she was placed in an asylum at Henley-in- 
Arden, only a few miles from the tomb of him whom 
she had done most to honor by trying to show that his 
work was utterly beyond the capacity of any one man. 
There a nephew found her, and, in April, 1858, brought 
her back to her own land. Death came to her in the 
autumn of the following year, and so, a victim to sin- 
gular self-deception, sadly and prematurely perished 
one of the most brilliant women of her generation. 
In the same ancient God's acre in which Delia 
370 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

Bacon takes her rest is the grave of James Abrani 
Hillhouse, a once lauded but now forgotten verse- 
maker. Born in New Haven in 1789, Hillhouse was 
duly graduated at Yale, and, save for a brief excursion 
in trade which carried him to New York, passed all of 
his fifty-two years in his native town. His home was 
a fine old mansion at the head of the elm-shaded 
avenue which bears his name, and there in the leisure 
which an ample fortune assured to him, he wrote his 
sacred drama " Hadad " and the other poetical works 
which in their collected form fill two goodly volumes. 
He was capable at his best of verse which falls little 
short of poetry of an elevated and smoothly flowing 
kind, but his inspiration was unequal to sustained 
effort, and, despite the extravagant praise of his con- 
temporaries, — Halleck described him as one " whose 
music, like his themes, lifts earth to heaven," — he 
long ago fell into his rightful place among those who 
are honored for brave failure rather than successful 
accomplishment. 

A man of other mettle and larger gifts was James 
Gates Percival, who like Hillhouse spent nearly all his 
days in New Haven. Percival was twenty years old 
when, in 1815, he was graduated at Yale first in his 

371 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

class. During the next dozen years he taught school, 
studied medicine and served as a surgeon in the reg- 
ular army, but in 1827 returned to New Haven, and 
a little later found congenial employment as state 
geologist of Connecticut. He was a hard-working, 
many-sided scholar, learned in all branches of science 
far beyond the ordinary standard of his day; but he 
was at the same time one of the most eccentric of men, 
holding aloof from his fellows and leading a hermit's 
life in bachelor rooms. One who was then a student 
at Yale recalls him, a singular and solitary figure, 
"scudding through the streets, his shoes unblackened 
— untied perhaps ; other garments dilapidated and 
rusty; with a scant old camlet cloak in chilly weather 
drawn close about him. A cantankerous man," adds 
the same authority, "taking everything hard, except 
the minutiffi of learning; most contented and easy 
when working till midnight on recondite phrases and 
philologic puzzles; but in every-day matters, imprac- 
ticable, disorderly, carping — sometimes ugly." 

This is Percival's portrait as sketched by a not un- 
friendly hand; and yet the crusty recluse was the most 
prolific verse maker of his time, capable at rare mo- 
ments of producing a really beautiful song or lyric. 

37^2 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

A number of these are to be found in his last poetical 
volume, "The Dream of a Day," published in 1843, 
and in his earlier volumes are many odes and ballads 
which prove him a poet of genuine if limited powers. 
Had he written less his verse would now find more 
readers, but the sin of copiousness may be forgiven 
the author of "To Seneca Lake," "The Coral Grove," 
and the stirring lines " O, it is great for our country to 
die, where ranks are contending!" which became one 
of the favorite battle songs of the Civil War. Percival 
left NeW' Haven in 1854, and died two years later 
while serving as state geologist of Wisconsin. 

Ill-balanced gifts thwarted the brilliant promise of 
Percival's opening years; the larger hope bound up in 
Theodore Winthrop's youth was brought to naught 
by his early death. Sprung from an honored and 
historic family, Winthrop was born in 1828 in a house 
now gone from Worcester Street, New Haven. Grad- 
uating at Yale at the age of twenty, he then spent 
two years in Europe, where he met William H. Aspin- 
wall who made him the tutor of his son, and a little 
later found a place for him in the employ of the Pacific 
Mail Steamship Company at Panama. He did not 
remain long on the Isthmus, but in 1854, after a visit 

373 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 

to California and Oregon, returned to his mother's 
home on Staten Island, and in the following year was 
admitted to the New York bar. Literature, however, 
was more attractive to him than the law, and while 
waiting for clients he toiled faithfully at the novels and 
sketches which, though he could find no publisher for 
them at the moment, were later to win him fame. 

Then came the opening of the Civil War. On the 
day of Lincoln's first call for volunteers, Winthrop 
enlisted in the Seventh Regiment of New York, and 
when that command returned home at the expiration 
of the thirty days for which it had taken service, he 
joined the staff of General Benjamin F. Butler. A 
night attack on Big Bethel was planned, and Winthrop, 
then stationed at Fort Monroe, sought and obtained 
permission to accompany the expedition. When near 
the enemy's lines, in the early morning of June 10, 
1861, two companies of Union troops fired upon each 
other through a mistake. This alarmed and aroused 
the Confederates; the expedition was repulsed, and 
Winthrop, while rallying his men, was shot through 
the heart. His body was left in Uie hands of the enemy, 
but a week later was delivered to his friends under a 
flag of truce, and, after a military funeral in New York 

374 



CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

City, was finally laid to rest in his native New Haven. 
Winthrop's gallant and untimely death, one of the 
earliest sacrifices in the Union cause, deeply moved 
the popular heart, and upon the appearance of two 
articles which he had contributed a short time before 
to the "Atlantic Monthly," wide-spread attention was 
drawn to his literary ability. Publishers were now 
quick to recognize the merit of the manuscripts which 
they had previously declined. Winthrop's novel " Cecil 
Dreeme," to which his friend George William Curtis 
prefixed a memoir, was published in the autumn of 
1865 ; and was quickly followed by " John Brent " and 
"Edwin Brothertoft," and by two volumes of sketches, 
" The Canoe and the Saddle " and " Life in the Open 
Air " — all of which met with wide circulation at the 
time, and still find admiring readers. They deserve 
them, for they are charged with strength and sincerity, 
and give evidence of a distinct vein of original genius 
which, one loves to think, needed only the chastening 
influence of time and experience to have given Win- 
throp a place among the makers of masterly fiction. 
More precious, however, than anything that he ever 
wrote was the lesson of a life which, to quote his own 
words, proved "how easy it is for noble souls to be 

875 



NEW ENGLAND IN LETTERS 



noble," and by its gallant ending forever enshrined 
him among the nation's heroes. 

The journeys which began at the birthplace of Long- 
fellow may fitly end for the moment at the home of 
Donald Grant Mitchell, who in hale and kindly age 
binds the busy present to a lettered past of which he 
is himself a part. A Yale graduate, Mr. Mitchell 
studied law but did not like it; and then, with " Reveries 
of a Bachelor," which proved him a loving and gifted 
disciple of Irving, made a successful entrance into 
authorship. This book and its delightful successor, 
"Dream Life," were written in New York City, but 
in 1855, at the age of thirty-three, Mr. Mitchell bought 
a farm of some two hundred acres lying midway be- 
tween New Haven and the village of West Haven, and 
transformed it into a charming country seat to which 
he gave the name of Edgewood. There he has ever 
since had his home, and thence in the course of half 
a century he has sent forth book after book to win the 
hearts of their readers with their delicate fancy, their 
quiet humor, their wholesome humanity, and the mel- 
low English in which they are written. 

Edgewood, though not far removed from the city's 
life, has the peace and quiet of a sheltered countiy 



S76; 



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CONNECTICUT WITS AND WORTHIES 

nook. Wood and stream and grassy terrace surround 
the house which thirty years ago took the place of the 
one described in " My Farm at Edgewood " — a roomy 
dwelling of wood and stone of rustic design and last- 
generation suggestion. Purple hills close in the land- 
scape, while to the south there is a welcome glimpse of 
the waters of the Sound stretching away to the shadowy 
Long Island shore. And in this place, says its white- 
haired master, it is always summer. 



877 



INDEX 



Adams, Brooks, 258 
Adams, Henry, 130 
Adams, John, 258, 264 
Adams, John Quincy, 35, 259 
Adams, William Taylor, 233 
Agassiz, Louis, 62, 128, 139, 177 
Alcott, Amos Bronson, 97, 103, 

105-110, 164, 167, 273 
Alcott, Louisa May, 108-110, 

165, 167 
Alden, John, 247, 264 
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 29, 62, 

138, 239-241 
Allen, Alexander V. G., 214 
Allen, Elizabeth Akers, 4 
Allen, William B., 271 
AUston, Washington, 158 
Ames, Fisher, 264 
Arnold, Benedict, 364 

B 

Bacon, Delia, 368-370 
Bacon, Leonard, 367-368 
Bancroft, George, 193-195, 291, 

305 
Barlow, Francis Channing, 272 
Barlow, Joel, 347-349 
Bartol, Cyrus A., 60, 198 
Beecher, Catherine, 356 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 328, 340 



Beecher, Lyman, 196-198, 340, 

366 
Bellamy, Edward, 297-299 
Benjamin, Park, 171 
Bentley, William, 67 
Benton, Joel, 189 
Billings, Josh, see Henry Wheeler 

Shaw 
Blaine, James G., 3 
Booth, Edwin, 139 
Bowles, Samuel, 291-295 
Bradford, William, 246 
Bradstreet, Anne, 54 
Bridge, Horatio, 6, 79, 95 
Briggs, Charles F., 135 
Brook Farm, 268-276 
Brooks, Charles T., 66 
Brooks, Erastus, 3 
Brooks, James, 3 
Brooks, Phillips, 56, 139, 212- 

217 
Brown, John, 320 
Browne, Charles Farrar, 13 
Brownell, Henry Howard, 355- 

356 
Brownson, Orestes A., 199 
Br)'ant, Frances Fairchild, 317 
Bryant, William Cullen, 168, 

312-319 
Bulkeley, Peter, 86 
Bull, Oie, 290 



379 



INDEX 



Burr, Aaron, 260 
Burr, Sr., Aaron, 310 
Bvirton, Warren, 272 
Bushnell, Horace, 342-346, 352 
Butler, Benjamin F., 374 
Byles, Mather, 210 



Cable, George W., 306 
Carlyle, Thomas, 88 
Carter, Robert, 129 
Chadwick, John White, 208 
Channing, Reverend William 

Eller>', 57, 139, 141,328 
Chanmng,WilliamEllery,95, 110 
Child, David Lee, 286 
Child, Francis J., 129 
Child, Lydia Maria, 169, 277, 

285-287 
Choate, Rufus, 20, 60, 65, 139, 

148-151 
Clarke, James Freeman, 20, 179, 

184, 198 
Clemens, Samuel Langhorne, 

358, 361-363 
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 127 
Coffin, Charles Carleton, 232 
Cogswell, Joseph, 193 
Cooke, Rose Terry, 324 
Craigie, Andrew, 114 
Cranch, Christopher P., 130 
Cummins, Maria Susanna, 66 
Curtis, George William, 111,272, 

273, 276, 318, 375 
Gushing, Caleb, 35 
Cushman, Charlotte, 139, 328 



D 

Dana, Charles A., 271 
Dana, Jr., Richard Henry, 125 
Dana, Sr., Richard Henry, 57, 

60, 125, 157-159 
Davis, Jefferson, 267 
Dawes, Henry L., 293 
Deering, Nathaniel, 4 
Dennie, Joseph, 144 
Derby, George Horatio, 266-268 
Dewey, Orv-ille, 338-339 
Dial, The, 195 
Dickinson, Emily, 304-305 
Dodge, Mar)' Abigail, 52 
Dwight, John S., 272 
Dwight, Timothy, 364-366 

E 
Edrehi, Israel, 290 
Edwards, Jonathan, 306-311, 

333, 364 
Edwards, Sara Pierpont, 307 
Eliot, Andrew, 163 
Emerson, Ellen Louisa Tucker, 

21 
Emerson, Lidian Jackson, 87, 88 
Emerson, Mar)' Moody, 16 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 15, 21, 

57, 86-92, 95, 101, 104, 107, 

112, 160, 164, 177, 246, 269, 

304 
Emerson, Jr., William, 87, 160 
Emerson, Sr., WilHam, 86 
Everett, Edward, 114, 128, 139, 

147 
Everett, William, 123 



380 



INDEX 



Felton, Cornelius C, 35, 115, 

128, 177 
Fern, Fanny, see Mrs. Parton 
Field, Cyrus West, 334 
Field, Jr., Da\-id Dudley, 334 
Field, Sr., David Dudley, 334 
Field, Eugene, 299-301 
Field, Henr>' Martyn, 334 
Field, Stephen Johnson, 334 
Fields, James T., 29, 61, 178 
Fisk, Pliny, 320 
Fiske, John, 59, 130 
Flagg, Wilson, 62 
Flynt, Henry, 260 
Francis, Convers, 285 
Fuller, Sarah Margaret, 90, 92, 
110, 124,195,273 



Garrison, William Lloyd, 37, 221 

Gerry, Elbridge, 132 

Glover, John, 114 

Gore, Christopher, 146 

Gould, Hannah, 35 

Gray, Asa, 129 

Greeley, Horace, 23, 242, 273 

H 

Hale, Edward Everett, 217-221 

Hale, John P., 20 

Hallock, Gerard, 320 

Hallock, Moses, 314, 320 

Hancock, John, 260 

Hardy, Arthur Sherburne, 20 

Hartford Wits, 346 



Hawthorne, Julian, 330 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 4-7, 71- 
84, 90, 92-99, 111, 183-187, 
262, 270, 271, 274, 282, 328- 
332, 370 
Hawthorne, Sophia Peabody, 82 
Hecker, Isaac, 272 
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 

36, 126 
Hildreth, Richard, 35, 171 
Hillard, George S., 115, 182 
Hillhouse, James Abram, 371 
Holland, Josiah Gilbert, 291, 

295-297 
Hohnes, Abiel, 120 
Holmes, John, 122 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 20, 57, 
61, 91, 120-122, 139, 173- 
177, 323 
Hooper, Lucy, 35 
Hopkins, Lemuel, 346 
Hopkins, Mark, 333 
Hopkins, Samuel, 335-336 
Howe, Julia Ward, 202-206 
Howe, Samuel Gridley, 202 
Howells, William Dean, 61, 92, 

131,236-239,282 
Humphreys, David, 346 
Hutchinson, Anne, 179 
Hutchinson, Thomas, 162, 264 



Ireson, Floyd, 64 

J 

Jackson, Helen Hunt, 301-304 
James, G. P. R., 329 



381 



INDEX 



James, Henry, 129 
Jewett, John P., 11 
Jewett, Sarah Orne, 180 
Judd, Sylvester, 306 
Judson, Ephraim, 338 

K 
Kemble, Fanny, 324, 325 
King, Rufus, 35 
King, Thomas Starr, 210-212 



Larcom, Lucy, 62, 233-236 
Lathrop, George Parsons, 73 
Lieber, Francis, 151 
Lincoln, Abraham, 322, 368 
Livermore, Harriet, 35 
Longfellow, Frances Appleton 

115 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 

1, 6, 7, 62, 81, 113-118, 177, 

287, 289, 290, 323 
Longfellow, Mary Potter, 8 
Lothrop, Harriet Mulford, 99 
Lowell, Charles, 133 
Lowell, James Russell, 132-139, 

177, 273 
Lowell, Maria White, 133 
Lunt, George, 35, 171 
Lyon, Mary, 319 

M 

McLellan, Isaac, 4 
Marsh, George Perkins, 20 
Mason, Lowell, 283 
Melville, Herman, 324-326, 330 
Miller, Charles Ransom, 297 



Mitchell, Donald Grant, 376-377 
Monti, Luigi, 290 
Morgan, John Pierpont, 342 
Morton, Thomas, 261-264 
Motley, John Lothrop, 62, 191- 

192, 262 
Mulford, EUsha, 130 
Munger, Theodore T., 344 

N 
Neal, John, 4 
Norton, Andrews, 127 
Norton, Charles Eliot, 127 

O 

Oliver, Thomas, 132 
Optic, Oliver, see William Tay- 
lor Adams 
O'Reilly, John Boyle, 241-243 



Paine, Thomas, 349 

Palfrey, John G., 127 

Parker, Theodore, 207-210, 268 

Parkman, Francis, 28, 226-230 

Parsons, Levi, 320 

Parsons, Theophilus, 34, 52 

Parsons, Thomas William, 200- 

202, 254, 290 
Parton, James, 35 
Parton, Mrs. Sara Payson Willis, 

2 
Payne, John Howard, 142, 155 
Pearson, Eliphalet, 120 
Pepperell, Sir William, 29 
Percival, James Gates, 371-373 
Phillips, Adelaide, 262 



dSS 



INDEX 



Phillips, Wendell, 57, 189-191 Shaw, Henry Wheeler, 320-323 



Phoenix, John, see George Hora- 
tio Derby 
Pierce, FrankHn, 6, 20, 76, 98, 99 
Pierpont, John, 35, 210, 341 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 156 
Prentice, George Dcnison, 352 
Prentiss, Elizabeth Payson, 4 
Prescott, William H., 62, 66, 153 



Quincy, Dorothy, 260 
Quincy, Edmund, 222 
Quincy, Josiah, 128, 143 

R 

Radical Club, 205 
Reeve, Tapping, 340 
Richards, William, 319 
Ripley, Ezra, 86, 93, 161 
Ripley, George, 195, 268-276 
Root, George Frederick, 336-338 
Ropes, John Codman, 231 
Rowson, Susanna, 155 
Rumford, Count, see Benjamin 

Thompson 
Russ, Cornelia, 353-355 



Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin, 

111 
Sanford, David, 336 
Sargent, Epes, 59, 225 
Sargent, John T., 205 
Saturday Club, 177 
Scudder, Horace E., 130 
Stdgwick, Catherine Maria, 332 



Shillaber, Benjamin P., 29 
Sigourney, Lydia Huntley, 352 
Smith, Eliza Oakes, 4 
Smith, Roswell, 296 
Smith, Samuel Francis, 283-285 
Smith, Seba, 3 
Sparks, Jared, 115, 128 
Spofiford, Harriet Prescott, 36 
Standish, Miles, 247, 264 
Stanton, Edwin M., 322 
Stephen, Leslie, 137 
Stephens, Ann S., 4 
Stimson, Frederick J., 266 
Stoddard, Richard Henry, 256- 

258 
Stoddard, Solomon, 307 
Story, Joseph, 66, 129, 139 
Story, William Wetmore, 66, 129 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 10, 53, 

340, 356-358 
Sumner, Charles, 115, 187 
Surriage, Agnes, 63 

T 

Tallmadge, Benjamin, 340 
Thackeray, William M., 155 
Thaxter, Celia, 29-32 
Thayer, James B., 123 
Thompson, Benjamin, 21 
Thoreau, Henry David, 99-105, 

109, 110, 112 
Ticknor, George, 152 
Transcendental Club, 195 
Treadwell, Daniel, 290 
Trowbridge, John Townsend, 

280-282 



S8S 



INDEX 



Trumbull, John, 346-347 
Tudor, William, 160 
Twain, Mark, see Samuel Lang- 
horne Clemens 

V 

Vassall, John, 114 
Very, Jones W., 69 

W 

Wadsworth, Peleg, 2 
Wales, Henry Ware, 290 
Ward, Artemus, see Charles 

Farrar Browne 
Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 

52, 53, 59, 283 
Ward, Nathaniel, 56 
Ware, Henry, 119 
Ware, William, 118 
Warner, Charles Dudley, 319, 

358-360 
Washington, George, 114 
Wasson, David Atwood, 111, 

178, 277-279 
Webster, Daniel, 16, 25, 146, 

250-253 



Webster, Edward, 251 
Webster, Fletcher, 251 
Webster, Grace Fletcher, 18 
Webster, Noah, 349-352, 364, 

367 
Wendell, OUver, 120 
Wentworth, Benning, 26 
Whipple, Edwin P., 59, 181, 211 
Whitefield, George, 35, 307 
Whitman, Marcus, 320 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 32, 

38-52, 58, 63, 167, 177, 234, 

352-355 
Williams, Talcott, 297 
Wilhs, Nathaniel Parker, 2, 139, 

170-172 
Willson, Forceythe, 130 
Winslow, Edward, 249 
Winsor, Justin, 231 
Winter, William, 59, 176 
Winthrop, Robert C, 224 
Winthrop, Theodore, 373-376 
Wolcott, Oliver, 339 
Wood berry, George E., 62 
Woodworth, Samuel, 1 )-255 
Worcester, Joseph Emerson, 115 



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